Action cinema’s primary selling point isn’t chitchat. Nonetheless, Motor City takes the muscle-over-mouthiness template to an aggravatingly unfulfilling extreme.
There are only a handful of functional lines of dialogue in Potsy Ponciroli’s film. Instead, the conceit is that this aggro revenge saga tells by showing, using endless affectations, over-the-top performances, and an eclectic score by executive producer Jack White to convey the particulars of its by-the-books story.
Aside from a couple of vicious set pieces, however, this genre effort’s gimmickry results in derivative cornball melodrama. It would have benefited greatly from speaking louder while carrying a big stick.
Premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival, Motor City kicks into gear in its opening sequence, in which Miller (Reacher star Alan Ritchson)—who won’t be identified as such until he’s called into an office to receive papers ending his parole—tosses a corpse with one leg off a building and onto a car, causing an accident.
On the street below, Miller blasts one driver with a shotgun and winds up on the hood of another vehicle. Flying off it when it hits the brakes, and firing at the wheelman mid-air, the bruised and bloody Miller resembles a hulking bada-- not far removed from Richson’s Jack Reacher. His intro massacre establishes the hallmarks that will define the rest of his tale: silence, violence, and super-slow-motion whenever and wherever possible.
It feels like two-thirds of Motor City operates at half-speed, and it doesn’t take long for that showiness to evolve from stylish to stilly to self-parodic.
Flashing back a bit, the film details how blue-collar auto worker Miller came to find himself in such a mess. It all began, it turns out, in the alley behind a bar, where his smoke was interrupted by the appearance of a sexpot in a low-cut gold dress named Sophia (Shailene Woodley), who asked for a light and then gave him some loving in return.
Ponciroli montages his way through their subsequent bliss, as well as Miller making a shady deal with Youngblood (The Bear’s Lionel Boyce) and having his car temporarily stolen by a trio of hoods. No sooner has Miller gotten down on one knee and received a yes from Sophia than the cops raid his home, busting him for the cocaine in his trunk that was planted by the aforementioned criminals, sending him away for 25 years and breaking Sophia’s heart in the process.
Miller has been set-up by Detective Savick (Pablo Schreiber), who’s eyed suspiciously by his colleague Detective Kent (Ben McKenzie). Motor City’s visual storytelling isn’t sophisticated; Savick is clearly bad because he wears a long black leather coat and has a dark goatee, whereas Kent is good because his suit is gray and he’s clean-cut.
The film’s production design strives hard for Starsky and Hutch-grade ’70s chic, although it mostly comes off as a pantomime, epitomized by the ridiculous wigs that Ritchson wears first as the shaggy and sweet pre-arrest Miller, and then as the long-haired and angry incarcerated hero. In his latter phase, the protagonist looks like a Me Decade version of the Count of Monte Cristo. That’s fitting, considering that he desperately wants to escape confinement to get vengeance against the man who imprisoned him: Reynolds (Ben Foster), a drug lord in loud, giant-collared shirts, sunglasses and gold chains who perpetrated this frame job because he was jealous of Miller stealing his girl Sophia.
Chad St. John’s script was once on the Black List, the annual rundown of Hollywood’s best unproduced screenplays. Yet Motor City is simplistic and inconsistent.
Angry and heartbroken over Miller’s conviction, Sophia falls right back into the arms of Reynolds, luxuriating in the life of drugs, sultry club dancing, and mansion living that his criminal enterprise affords. Sophia is both mother and whore, and her one-dimensional characterization is par for the proceedings’ course.
Minus any dialogue and composed of hackneyed poses, looks, and narrative beats, the film resembles a long-form AI demo reel in which actors don’t act so much as perform clichéd shtick. Ritchson, Woodley, Foster and the rest aren’t playing characters; they’re embodying archetypes who are defined by single traits, emotions, and motivations.
Additionally nodding to Escape from Alcatraz and John Wick (would you believe Miller and his two buddies are, per their matching tattoos, ex-Rangers?), Motor City is mostly a second-rate cutscene masquerading as an actual movie.
Ponciroli’s infatuation with slow-mo makes everything and everyone seem like they’re stuck in quicksand, and some of his shots—such as Miller and his cohorts strutting away from a fiery explosion—reveal a striking lack of imagination.
That said, with its finale, this beat-‘em-up finally stops dragging its feet and drums up some thrills. A fight between Miller and Savick in an elevator is a knock-down, drag-out triumph, with the combatants slashing and stabbing each other with messy, visceral brutality. A subsequent skirmish in a convertible that has no one behind the wheel is similarly invigorated, and offers a peek into the more adrenalized form this material might have taken.
Without anything to say and merely stale things to do, Miller and company are reduced to behaving as if they’re in a music video, all big gestures and exaggerated expressions.
Ritchson is unconvincing when asked to be smiley and lovey dovey but proves persuasive as a bruiser. Woodley and Foster, on the other hand, self-consciously slink, shimmy, and rampage about the frame, incapable of making Sophia and Reynolds anything more than Crime Fiction 101 stick figures.
The stylization, and distillation of drama to its bare bones building blocks, is of course the point of Motor City. However, its plot is so lacking in novelty that it undermines its all-mute, all-the-time gimmick. Who cares if no one is opening their mouths when their dilemmas are this old hat?
Ironically, the sole way Motor City could have enlivened its rote formula is through clever dialogue. Without it, Ponciroli’s feature idles along from one stock scenario and skirmish to another, trying in vain to energize its been there, done that action with classic rock tracks (Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain,” The Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin”) and White’s eclectic score.
Despite its ceaseless posturing, it has all the personality of a brick wall.
