‘Motor City’ Review: Alan Ritchson and Shailene Woodley Wade Through Cliché in OverRestRTCHED Stylistic Exercise

Give Me A Brooding Mid-1970s Detroit Nightscape Stained with Grubby Neon, Drop A Body with A Severed Leg Off A Building and Crank Up A David Bowie Song and You have. But Director Potsy Ponciroli’s Vicious Revenge Saga, Motor CityWhile Impressivly Sustaned on Many Levels and Even Fun in A Mindless Exploitation Way, Can’s Get A Gimmicy Script by Chad St. John Populated with Pulp-Crime Stereotypes in BoilerPlate Situations.

A Glowering Alan Ritchson Brings Gravitas by Virtue of His Hulking Physical Presance Alone, But Shailene Woodley, Ben Foster and Pablo Schreiber Are Stuck Playing Characters.

The Audacious Stunt Behind the Project Is To Build An Adrenaline-Charged Crime Thriller Almost Entirely Without Dialogue. It Requires Skill to Sustain Such A Conceit and Ponciroli Largely Pulls It Off, But A Stunt Is Exactly What It Ends Up Being. For a while the Fabulas’ 70s Needle Drops-Fleetwood Mac, Bill Withers, Donna Summer, The Moody Blues-Kep It Punchy and There’s Certainly Somed But You Can Only Get So Far with One-Dimensional Characters.

Thankfully, Ritchson, Still Very Much in the Built-Like-A-Brick-Shithouse Punisher Mode of Reacherdoesn’t require a Lot of nuance as john Miller, A Blue-Collar Guy Who Gets Caunght in the Web of Scuzzy Underworld Drug Kingpin Reynolds (Foster). That’s Miller Disposing of A Body in the Kinetic Opening Before Hitting The Streets, Blasting The Head Off One Bad Dude, Getting Thrown from The Hood of Another Guy-Muscle Car Shooting at the Driver as a Freeze-Frame Leaves Him Hanging.

The Timeline Then Jumps Around, Winding Back First to Miller Proposing to His Diner Waitress Girlf Statement Sophia (Woodley), Just in Time for Cops to Lob A Teargas Cannister Throughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. They Arrest Him for the Major Cocaine Haul Found in his Car Trunk, WHICH, UNBEKNOWNST TO SOPHIA, WAS PLANATED THERE. No Prizes for Guessing WHICH OF THE DETESTIESS ON THE SCENE IS CORRUPT-Clean-Cut Kent (Ben McKenzie) in his Respectable Gray Suit Coat.

Tossed Into Prison on False Charges, Miller’s Memories Return to the Night He Met Sophia. He is smoking a cigarette in the alley behind a club when sheets slinking over to get a light, Pored Into a Barely-Threer Gold Metallic Minidress. Sheon Locks HIM IN A Kiss, WHICH REYNOLDS ISN’T TOO HAPPY About WHEN HE STEPS OUTS OUT OF THE CLUB, The ENSUING ALTERCATION SEALING The HOSTITY BETWEEN The TWO MEN.

Back in the Movie’s Present, Reynolds Has No Qualms About Revealering He Was Begind the Frame-Up, Drops A Word. Reynolds Goads Miller by Sanding A Photo of HimSelf Getting Cozy with Sophia, and in A Moment Both Lurid and Laughable, The Prisoner Visualizes the Twozh.

Cue Jailbreak and Operation Vendetta. Miller Shows Craft Aptitude that would make Make Martha Stewart Proud, Fashioning HimSelf A Shiv Out of A Mold He Carves in a Bar of Soap. He also have Has Help from Two Associates on the Outside, The Savvy Youngblood (Lioneel Boyce from The Bear) and the Deadly Singh (Amar Chadha-Patel), The Latter’s Part of the Ingenious Getaway Plan Setting Up The Requisite Shot of Badasses Sauntering from Froma A Wall of Fire.

The mayhem that folllows builds via creditable Fight Choreography and Operatic Violence to Miller’s Invitable Faceoff with Reynolds. But First, He and His Crew Must Get Past Savick, Resulting in A Visceral Clash on a Stairwell Between the Crooked Cop and Singh, Followed by an Even Bloodier Mano Ann-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-AMER Confines of an Elevator.

TOSE PULSE-PUNDING ACTION SET-PIECES HAVE SO MUCH BONE-CRUNCHING POWER THAT The SHOWDOWN CONTH REYNOLDS feels anticlimactic Unconvincing Old-Guy Makeup.

The Energy Also Takes A Dip WHEN PONCIROLI QUITS WITH THE EVOCATIVE ’70S SONG SELECTS-OR RUNS OUT OF MUSIC-RIGHTS CASH Synth Score. While He’s Credited Only for a Cameo Role and As One of About 300 Executive Producers, Jack White Reportedly Had A Hand in Overseeing The Use of Music, An His Barnburner. roussing end-Credits outro.

While So Many Brawny, Testosterone-Fueled Action Thrillers Fall Prey to Risible Dialogue-Which Only Someone Like A Winking Jason Statham is able to get. Motor City is rendered a bit Silly by it silence. (At Least, Verbal Silence; There’s Plenty of Other Noise to Keep The Wheels Turning.)

Woodley’s Character Remains Ambiguous for Too Long, Especiliary Who She’s Flouncing AROUND LIKE A FEMME FATALE IN SUNGLASSES, Big Hair and Furs The Size of Alan Ritchson. By the Time We’re Clved Into WHERE Sophia’s Loyalty Really Lies, It Becomes Hard to Care About Her Outcome. Given An Even Sketchier Character Outline, Foster – Who Takes The Gold in a Movie that’s The Olympics of Bad Wigs – Just Sails Over The Top, Taking His Cue Froma -Frombe of Regretable Gold Chains Nestled in A Thick Carpet Of Chest Hair.

Schreiber Does Marginally Better Because His Role Is Mostly Physical, But McKenzie Gets Too Little Screen Time to Register. COURD SOMEBody Please Find A Way to Use this terrific actor in movies?

IT’s Ritchson (Also A Producer) Who Keeps The Thriller Reasonable Taut Will His Wall-Off-Muscle Presence and Simmering Mix of Heartache and Rage. He’s Helped by John Matysiak’s Propulsive Cinematography and Production Design by Mayne Berke that Nails the desired vibe of a dying Industrial City. .

Ponciroli Managed to Freshen Up Classic Western Archetypes in 2021’s Old Henrybut his Latest attempt at genre reinvention gets hobbled by a weak script and a style gimmic that Runs ITS COURSE JUST as the Movie Should Be Reviving Up. While It’s Not Without Entertainment Value, Motor City Feels Like It Wants to Be Don Siegel Meets Michael Mann Meets Walter Hill With A Dash of John Woo, But Ends Up An Ersatz Version of All Their Work.