August 8, 2017 (2017), theater. What a contrast to the last film I saw, “La La Land” Katheryn Bigelow’s docudrama about the Detroit riots of 1967, 50 years on, is a hard one to watch It is disturbing, depressing, horrifying, brutal and quite relentless as it focuses in on the Algiers Hotel where police sadism and murderous violence led to the execution of three young men It also shows the efforts of some to move on with their lives even as the city erupts; they go to work, they try to catch their big break into the music business (The Dramatics are a real group and their story is real) It is quite excruciating to watch and is never broken by irony, sarcasm or attempts at humor The portrayals are stark and the characters sometimes lack nuance But the characters are real, the names unchanged to protect the guilty Not all the ‘white’ characters, including police officers, are caricatured or portrayed as villains The system is profoundly guilty The film’s purpose, however, is not simply to speak to a terrible event, police brutality and the failure of the judicial system It is to encourage viewers to link those events directly with Ferguson, NYC, Baltimore, Minneapolis, Cleveland, etc; to get us to understand why Black Lives Matter is not simply a response to our moments, detached from history The final song by The Roots and Bilal, “It Ain’t Fair,” sung over the credits, speaks to this ongoing crisis with incredible pathos Interesting tidbit, much of the film was shot here in Boston.