The director you might remember from Old Henry (2021) and one of my favorites, Greedy People (2024), Potsy Ponciroli, has a film with a cinematography so sterile it reminds you of Apple TV ads, the magnificent charisma of Alan Ritchson, and the wonderful acting of Shailene Woodley, but with less than a page’s worth of dialogue in total, it starts to bore you after a certain point as if you’re watching a Zack Snyder movie.
If what you expect from a movie is good action scenes, beautiful faces, and impressive cinematography, then Motor City is perfect for you. But if you think you won’t be satisfied with a film that follows the exact same storytelling formula that’s been used over and over again, tries to do it almost without any dialogue, and on top of that constantly exposes you to 70s music, then this movie is not for you.
Making a nearly dialogue-free film takes courage, but if that courage doesn’t also bring a bit of originality and creativity along with it, it doesn’t mean much. Imagine the action movies you’ve watched countless times before, but without dialogue. Motor City is unfortunately nothing more than that.
Set in 1977 Detroit, the film tells the story of how the life of Vietnam veteran and factory worker John Miller (Alan Ritchson) is suddenly torn apart. On the day John proposes to his girlfriend Sophia (Shailene Woodley), he is framed and unjustly arrested for drug possession in a trap set by her ex-boyfriend and local gang boss Reynolds (Ben Foster). Then John is broken out of prison by his friends, and the story takes on a revenge-driven turn.
I have to be honest: even though the film does all of this with such wonderful cinematography, the actors look as if they’ve sworn to deliver the best performances of their lives, and it has good music choices that occasionally make you feel like you’re watching a music video along with solid action scenes, you still find yourself asking: “Why did this movie even need to be dialogue-free?”
When I learned the film was dialogue-free, I was happy because I thought I’d be watching something more experimental in an era where every movie repeats itself. But after watching it, I realized that this claim of being dialogue-free was the film’s biggest shackle. This film, which is quite beautiful in many ways, destroys all the potential it has in its pursuit of being dialogue-free. In dozens of moments where we need the characters to speak, we see the actors putting their entire existence into trying to express their emotions and struggling at times while doing so. But even the actors’ dedication mostly isn’t enough.
I inevitably start thinking: “I wish the movie had dialogue. No matter how cliché the dialogue was…” If you’re making your film without dialogue, you need to offer creative elements that support that idea. When you can’t, it unfortunately turns into a 100-minute music video. There has to be a better way to describe this… It’s like trying to eat soup with a fork. You get a little of the soup’s wonderful smell and taste, but you can never take a full mouthful that would actually satisfy you. The soup is sitting right there with all its potential and flavor, but because the waiter forgot to bring a spoon, you can never quite reach it.
