Motor City

by Mike McGranaghan

Motor City is a 103-minute music video. Literally. The characters in this movie do not speak to each other. Somebody utters a stray word here and there; by and large, though, they communicate by staring or giving meaningful looks. Much of the heavy lifting is done by the soundtrack of (mostly) 1970s pop songs. Director Potsy Ponciroli (Greedy People) and writer Chad St. John (London Has Fallen) are obviously experimenting here. While the picture does hold a small amount of interest as an experiment, it doesn’t work beyond that.

Set in ‘70s Detroit, the story, such as it is, concerns ex-con John Miller (Alan Ritchson) who battles a drug kingpin named Reynolds (Ben Foster) for the heart of Sophia (Shailene Woodley), the woman they both love. Miller stole her away from Reynolds, who gets revenge by framing his rival for drug possession. From prison, Miller launches a plan to escape and get Sophia back. That’s about it. With no dialogue, you don’t exactly get a lot of narrative depth.

What we get instead is a series of music video-like sequences strung together. Miller gets arrested to the tune of Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain.” The hedonistic lifestyle of Reynolds and Sophia plays out to Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love.” When a pop song isn’t being used, a piece of instrumental music takes its place. Many of these sequences would have been dazzling as a set piece in the context of a different movie. They’re stylishly shot and edited to the tempo of the songs. Seeing them one after another, with no verbal interaction between the characters, causes a sense of stagnancy after a while.

The effect is also just weird. Since they don’t speak, the actors frequently have to engage in mundane, belabored behaviors – pouring a cup of coffee, sitting in a chair – while trying to make staring at one another seem natural. In fairness, the core trio of stars have expressive faces, so we do generally understand what their characters are feeling. The approach nevertheless severely limits the development of those characters. Without knowing more about them, it’s difficult to care about their predicament.

The best parts of Motor City are the action sequences, which don’t need dialogue anyway. Chief among them is an intense fight scene in an elevator that contains two men and a very sharp knife. The grand finale is a wild car chase that’s impressively inventive in its staging. What becomes glaringly obvious is that if the film had even a little added dialogue to develop its story and characters, everything would have glued together in a more satisfying manner.

That cool last battle unfortunately leads to a silly coda that finds Ritchson in some of the most laughably bad prosthetic work I’ve ever seen. Motor City delivers in the action department, but, at the end of the day, is reminiscent of Gus Van Sant’s infamous shot-for-shot remake of Psycho, i.e. a stunt that doesn’t quite succeed.