Film: “Detroit” directed by Katherine Bigelow (review from 2017)

With her latest film,” Detroit” (2017), Kathryn Bigelow nails it. Like "Zero Dark Thirty" and "Hurt Locker" she paints scenes of war-torn areas with the vibrancy and accuracy of a documentarian--only this time, the battlefield is war-torn Detroit in 1967.

The backdrop is a city riddled by violence, rioting and a racist police force. The subject of this breathtaking and immensely sad film (covered in an earlier book by John Hersey) is the incident at Detroit's Algiers Motel, where three white policemen terrorized innocent residents and killed a few in the bargain in search of what they thought was a sniper.

Graphic, violent, and unforgettable: choose three. With Will Poulter as the young white hotheaded cop whose eyebrows are as menacing as Mitchum's in "Night of the Hunter" and is as trigger happy as Bull Connor. Algee Smith has a breakout role as the innocent aspiring Motown singer who makes the mistake of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Couldn't happen again, you say? Racism disappeared in America? Pick up a newspaper and think again. Dayum. Written by Mark Boal.