Title: Motor City
Describe This Movie Using One Simpsons Quote:
GORDIE HOWE: Dearest Edna, I must leave you. Why? I cannot say. Where? You cannot know. How I will get there? I haven’t decided yet. But one thing I can tell you, any time I hear the wind blow, it will whisper the name… “Edna.”
Brief Plot Synopsis: Wrongfully imprisoned behemoth seeks revenge, part 2,304.
Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 2.5 cocaine pinky nails out of 5.
Tagline: “Love will drive you mad.”
Better Tagline: “Love means never having to say … anything.”
Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: Ex-con John Miller (Alan Ritchson) has a pretty good deal going. He’s working an assumedly union job in an auto plant. And he just met this great girl Sophia (Shailene Woodley). Unfortunately, Sophia’s ex Reynolds (Ben Foster) is none too happy about this, and — together with crooked cop Savick (Pablo Schreiber) — frame Miller for drug distribution and get him put back in prison. If you think Miller’s going to take this lying down, you clearly haven’t seen any of a thousand variations of this story before.
“Critical” Analysis: The conceit (or gimmick, if you prefer) behind Motor City is potentially a polarizing one. Specifically, the movie has almost no dialogue. There are maybe four or five lines, and most of these spoken by Shailene Woodley in the background.
If that sounds like a dealbreaker, then Motor City likely isn’t for you. If it doesn’t, and you feel like giving director Potsy Ponciroli (Old Henry, Greedy People) a chance to win you over via sound design and curiously curated needle drops, well, that’s cool too.
On paper, Motor City has potential. And maybe if Ponciroli had taken the opportunity to cram his movie with wall-to-wall Ritchson mayhem, it could’ve fulfilled it. Instead, he and writer Chad St. John are happy to load up on characters exchanging portentous looks or mean mugging each other. There are a handful of decent fights and car chases, mostly in the final act, but they just punctuate how lacking the movie otherwise is.
Part of this is the deliberate ambiguity. Everything we learn is inferred, not heard. This is obviously by design, but it turns out dialogue helps with things like character and plot development. What was Sophia’s actual relationship with Reynolds? What was the nature of John’s service in Vietnam? Why was he on probation in the first place?
The movie’s set in the late ’70s, so some anachronisms are inescapable. The most glaring one being that Alan Ritchson should never be clad in a ringer T-shirt. In fact, I have a hard time believing they made those shirts in his size way back then. Mitch and his buddies in Dazed and Confused are ringer tee material, not a dude who runs 6′ 3″ and 235 pounds.
Ritchson, of course, is best known for playing the title character on Prime Video’s Reacher. He landed the role of John Miller after 15 years of development where everyone from Dominic Cooper to Jake Gyllenhaal to Gerard Butler was attached. And honestly, it may have been more compelling/believable to put someone with smaller dimensions in the lead.
That’s no knock against Ritchson, who proves here he can emote sans dialogue. Woodley does her best. But in spite of having the only lines, she can only do so much with an underwritten part. Foster and Schreiber, meanwhile, go through the motions playing their latest variations of twitchy sleazebag.
Maybe we could forgive all that if the song choices — so critical to making up for actual conversation — were inspired one. But for every “Year of the Cat,” we get another spin of David Bowie’s “Cat People.” And as refreshing as it is to hear Sho Nuff’s “Mix Match Man,” there’s also Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” and “Nights in White Satin” by the Moody Blues making their umpteenth soundtrack appearances. I only have vague recollections of that era, but I feel like Fleetwood Mac recorded more than three songs.
Still, kudos to Ponciroli for taking such a big swing. I’m a sucker for a revenge flick, especially one set in the 1970s. And Ritchson doles out righteous ass-kickings like few actors today. In the end, however, we have an old set of tropes in a new wrapper. I can applaud the audacity while acknowledging that audiences probably aren’t going to respond favorably.
Motor City is in theaters today.
