A musclebound guy seeks revenge after a drug lord sets him up and steals the woman he loves. The movie sets itself apart from the crowd with its opera-like, needle-drop sound design and nearly dialogue-free script. But the words that do slip through include f-word screeches. And the visuals are savage, gory and spattered with drug use and a little nudity.
Without hearing a word from him, you’d easily note that John was unabashedly head-over-heels for Sophia. At a glance, the two appear fashioned from the same tough-hide leather that the late-70s, Detroit-streets mill can produce.
John suffered through some rough times since getting back from Vietnam. But ever since meeting Sophia, he’s had something to fight for, not against. And that’s made him a better man. Problem is, John had convinced Sophia to walk away from the controlling embrace of a Detroit drug lord named Reynolds. And Reynolds isn’t a guy who has stuff taken from him. He’s more of a taker.
But Reynolds bides his time. And just as John drops to a knee and proposes to his live-in girlfriend, the cops swoop in and bust John for a massive cocaine haul that they find in the trunk of his car.
As a cuffed-up John sits in an interview room, Reynolds strolls in. (Hey, cash can get a lot of doors opened and a lot of trunks stuffed in the dirty city of Detroit.) Reynolds sits down and slides the engagement ring that John had just given to Sofia across the table with a wordless pout that morphs into a grin. He then stands and strolls back out.
No words were exchanged in that tiny bit of greased-palm theater. But the message was clear: John had lost Sophia. And as past-due bills crush in on the deserted gal, Reynolds was going to make her an offer that she couldn’t long refuse. Money has a way of opening that door, too.
What is John left with? Nothing much … except a deep-seated need for deadly revenge.
There’s not much positivity to make note of here except for the fact that it appears that John and Sophia are happy and in love at one point, and they want to marry and settle down with a family.
During scenes that take place at Christmas, the song “Ring, Christmas Bells” plays in the movie underscore, including the lyrics, “Tell all the world Jesus is King” and “The birthday of Jesus is here.”
Reynolds works his way back into Sophia’s life and marries her. Then he sends a wedding photo to John with the goading caption: “You should have seen the wedding night.”
John has a vision while in prison of Sophia stripping off a nightgown and exposing her breasts. She and Reynolds then engage in some sensual activity. We see Sophia dressed in very low-cut dresses, sometimes dancing actively on the dance floor and exposing large amounts of flesh. Both John and Reynolds kiss Sophia passionately.
Between John and his Vietnam vet friends and Reynolds and his hired thugs, a lot of people get shot, run over by vehicles, stabbed repeatedly and die in bloody and sometimes gruesome ways.
For instance, John and a corrupt detective get into a massive battle in an elevator. The fighting centers around a single, large-blade knife. Both men get stabbed and slashed repeatedly, smearing blood all around the white elevator interior. The cop’s foot gets stabbed and his hand gets impaled and pinned to the floor. The cop then forcibly tears his hand free, slicing the palm and fingers open. The knife is shoved through John’s forearm and the cop’s leg eventually gets blown off with a rifle blast—leaving the ravaged flesh, bone and arteries exposed and gushing profusely.
In another brutal fight, two men gouge, pound, tear and bite each other in an open speeding convertible as the vehicle careens wildly through city streets, smashing cars and people along the way. Eventually the vehicle crashes and flips, and one of the men drags his own shattered and profusely bleeding body along the tarmac.
Many bloody gunfights fill time, too, featuring blown-open heads, massive shotgun blasts and explosive, homemade bombs. Shotgun shells are refilled with pennies and other objects that tear people’s flesh in vicious ways. The side of an individual’s face gets torn up by one such blast.
Reynolds tugs and pulls Sophia and puts his hands over her face at various moments in the story. It’s not exactly painful violence, but it’s definitely rough and abusive manhandling. She fights back in one instance.
Cars speed and crash. A dead man is thrown down from a rooftop onto a crashing car. A detective is killed execution-style with three bullets to the temple. Men get beaten with clubs and fists. A prison guard moves to batter a prisoner and gets stabbed repeatedly with a homemade shiv. He’s left to bleed out on the floor. Police drive a man face-first to the pavement. Someone’s face gets slammed up against iron bars, leaving the victim bleeding. A woman is shot in the back and dies. Etc.
Conversations take place on screen, but we hear next-to-none of it. Occasionally, though, we will hear words slip through the movie’s musical score, including six or seven exclamations of the f-word.
People smoke heavily throughout the film. And we see individuals tossing back bottles of beer and drinking glasses of wine. They consume harder booze regularly, too.
Reynolds is a top dog in a cocaine racket. We see he and his thugs packaging and hiding their product in a variety of ways. We also see Reynolds snorting coke on a couple different occasions. Sophia is found unconscious with needle tracks and heavy bruises on her arm.
A tear-gas canister is thrown into a room, the gas surrounding and choking the room’s occupants.
Reynolds is able to use his wealth to cajole Sophia away from John. Someone’s car is stolen.
If you’re a lover of movies, you’re bound at some point to opine that Hollywood has run out of ideas. It can feel like every new pic is a carbon copy of so much that’s come before it. There are no new stories, no new creative concepts, everything is derivative, you might declare. And then a movie like Motor City comes along and blows that viewpoint away like a shotgun shell filled with pennies.
Director Potsy Ponciroli’s latest is nothing new from a story perspective. We know his tale of revenge in the gritty streets of Detroit by heart. We could almost recite the teeth-clenched lines ourselves and dictate who’s going to die next in a pool of blood. But that fact is Motor City’s central conceit.
Motor City surprises audiences with next-to-no dialogue. Only a few words slip past the film’s score and needle-drop compilation (the f-word and “love” are the two most frequent). All other interactions are either seen from a distance and unheard, or viewed up close and expressively silent.
That choice gives this film an almost operatic (and at times, silent movie) quality. People get beaten, stabbed and slammed to the pavement, but we hear ‘70s and ‘80s soul, rock and disco tracks blended with original underscore and percussive sound design. It’s a very slick and impressive creative choice that lets the actors showcase their skillsets and show us everything while telling us nothing.
That’s not to suggest that you should grab the family and head to the theater. The movie may be creative, but it also flaunts a disturbing visual bricolage of drug use, nudity and gory flesh mulching (with the occasional f-word punctuation).
Yes, Hollywood can still surprise you with its new movie ideas. But that doesn’t mean you’ll love them.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
