The desire to get revenge is something that can fester within one’s soul, driving them to the point of insanity as they allow it to consume them. However, it also feels exceptionally good to get retribution against those who have caused harm in your life – or at least this is what Hollywood seems to want to lead us to believe, since few genres have been as successful as the revenge thriller, which has had a long and storied existence across multiple media and has found quite a comfortable home in cinema, where the entire concept of someone being wronged (whether by an individual, a group or an entire system) has led to some fascinating works over the years. One recent example, and indeed one that does warrant some of its popularity even if it isn’t a particularly good film for reasons that will be outlined momentarily, is Motor City, written by Chad St. John and brought to the screen by Potsy Ponciroli, who has built quite a fascinating career in only a few films. The story follows John Miller, an ordinary working-class man living in Detroit (the titular Motor City) in the late 1970s, but after being framed for a crime and sent to prison, he finds himself at odds with a particularly insidious criminal, who takes it upon himself to ruin John’s life, which he does through romancing his girlfriend Sophia, who is misled into thinking that her beau is never going to be released from prison. However, he inevitably does get out, and after years of simmering anger, he decides to take matters into his own hands, setting out to get revenge by any means necessary, even if it means resorting to the kind of violence he swore he’d never embrace after serving in the Vietnam War, in which he learned the value of peace. A simple premise that is both supported and eventually undone by a particular directorial decision that proves ambition is always valuable, but only to an extent. Motor City had potential that wasn’t entirely wasted, but instead exists in the more liminal space between being a strong and audacious throwback to a beloved genre and an overly convoluted attempt at revisiting the core qualities that eventually led to the revenge thriller losing most of its lustre as time went on.

Motor City is not a particularly rich film when it comes to its themes, which is part of what makes it so understandably divisive. On one side, we have those who find it to be a strong example of how there is nothing quite as effective as a simple story told well, whereas others view it as hollow and insincere, an effort to be subversive when in reality it is much more shallow than we may have initially expected. This isn’t to say there is no merit at all in what this film is trying to achieve – it is indeed a very interesting piece of filmmaking, but what it ultimately lacks is a clear purpose in terms of the story. The idea of someone being framed for a crime (in this case a low-level drug offence) and who finds his entire life spiralling out of control because a mobster has chosen to strike him where it hurts the most by romancing his girlfriend (whose own willingness to just succumb to the temptation is one of the biggest plot holes in the film) is quite cliched, even if it does resemble many other similar works. The problem here is not that this is part of the plot of this film, but rather that it never evolves beyond this, being a relatively bland and unconvincing story of someone trying to get revenge on someone whose own reasons for causing so much suffering are never clarified, to rescue a romantic partner who seemed far too eager to move on despite knowing that John was innocent. It’s not particularly good storytelling, and it takes a lot of time to actually reach a coherent point, which becomes hopelessly frustrating since the film never truly moves beyond this one-sentence premise, despite its length, missing out on nearly every opportunity to do something interesting with the material, none of which really grows beyond what we’re presented with at the start, leading to a rather questionable, unconvincing action thriller that does do well in replicating the past, but never being able to actually do all that much with it, a strange decision that ultimately does impact the film quite severely as it progresses.

This ultimately brings the conversation to the specific aspect that has drawn most of the focus when it comes to discussing Motor City, which is built on the idea of making an action film in which there is hardly any dialogue. In nearly two hours, there are roughly two dozen audible lines, reserved for moments when the plot requires it, and where the majority of the story is entirely built from the images. Cinema is a visual medium, and while we tend to view dialogue as being understandably important, as we’ve seen in the roots of the industry, it is driven primarily by images, which seems to be something that this film is intent on exploring. Taking its cue from a very specific era in American cinema, particularly the landmark masterpiece Scorpio Rising, the film utilises music as the primary supplement to the images, with the focus on assembling a film driven by over two dozen immensely recognisable songs from the era, making it entertaining to a degree, but certainly not enough to justify some of the other decisions made throughout the film in terms of its narrative, which is where everything ultimately begins to fall apart at the seams. Part of the appeal of such an approach is seeing how far a concept can be stretched without relying on dialogue – had this been a more conventional film, we’d have likely found it to be just another derivative action thriller about revenge – but it definitely is not strong enough to entirely sell the approach as it is, calling into question whether or not the experiment was worth the time and effort, since the conceptual shortcomings begin to shine through intensely as the film progresses and we grow bored of the overall stylistic approach. We eventually reach a point where it becomes clear that so much of the actual plot development was built around the idea of presenting the film with minimal dialogue, and that it was far too limited in scope to actually justify many of these more bewildering narrative decisions. It doesn’t ultimately amount to all that much, eventually becoming extremely limited and lacking any real weight beneath the surface after quite some time.

We find that Motor City is one of those films where it is more exciting to read about the production than it is to actually watch the film, since this screenplay had a long and arduous journey to the screen, changing hands constantly for well over a decade. Various directors were attached (which included a few extraordinarily exciting names), but what truly stood out were the actors in consideration for the central role. It would be tacky to name some of the ones that ultimately didn’t stay attached, but needless to say there were some inspired choices. The role ultimately ended up going to Alan Ritchson, who was perhaps a logical choice considering his prior work, but most certainly far from the most enthralling. His physique makes him a good candidate for the physical aspects of the character (although we have to wonder whether casting someone whose entire career has been built around playing overly masculine action heroes was making the eventual conceit of the film far too obvious), and he’s proven to be a decent dramatic performer in the past, with the more intense moments in projects like Jack Reacher and War Machine showing that he is capable of emotion, rather than just relying on his lumbering physique. He’s certainly not bad in Motor City, but he does lack a specific quality that would’ve sold the film as a whole, and ultimately doesn’t manage to rise to the heights required of the film. If anything, the lack of dialogue doesn’t do him any favours, since this would’ve been a good opportunity to show that he can handle even more intensely dramatic work, but by removing the one element that could’ve pushed the film in that direction, the approach has the opposite effect. It’s impressive how he performs some of the daunting physical work, but the emotions get lost in the shuffle. The same can be said for both Shailene Woodley and Ben Foster, who do fine work but who are ultimately not all that impressive given how there’s not really all that much for them to do when all is said and done. It’s a film where the actors feel incidental to the plot, which is strange considering how much of the story hinges on their ability to emote, pointing to the lack of consistency in how the film develops these characters as more than just one-dimensional archetypes, and which ultimately weighs the film down in various ways.

Motor City is certainly creative enough as it is to be a fun experiment, but once the novelty has worn off, we begin to see that it is not particularly worth the time and effort that went into its creation, since there’s nothing really all that impressive about what the film is doing, going in some very obvious directions while also never realising that to make such a concept work, there needs to be constant attention paid to building on the premise, rather than maintaining the same approach throughout. It doesn’t take long for us to get bored of the concept that guides this film, which loses a lot of its charm once we realise there’s no broader purpose behind it, other than an attempt to see if an entire film can be made with minimal dialogue. For an action film, it seems extremely obvious, and while it does prove to be somewhat successful, it also never really amounts to all that much, being quite one-note most of the time and following the same conventions that we would expect, not being particularly noteworthy outside of a few interesting sequences that seem like exceptions to the mostly derivative film more than anything else. It follows a clear pattern and goes in every predictable direction, which offers solid entertainment for a couple of hours before swiftly ending and leaving very little impression. It has its place, and we can certainly appreciate the audacity, but when it ultimately doesn’t amount to anything all that valuable, we do grow a bit weary of the merits of this film, which is solid and entirely unremarkable in every way.