Motor City

Miller (Alan Ritchson) in prison

Would Motor City be a better film without the gimmick? Which is? No dialogue. Or not much anyway. Five lines, the blurbs say, though even that might be an exaggeration. Director Potsy Ponciroli made Old Henry a few years ago, and I liked that. So I gave him the benefit of the doubt and waded in, finding the wordlessness by turns charming, fascinating, irritating and cute but ultimately rewarding. You have to surrender yourself to his conceit, I reckon, which I eventually did. Dialogue is not strictly that important anyway, this being the story of a dude in 1970s Detroit who is fitted up for a crime he didn’t commit – he’s been … Read more

Old Henry

Tim Blake Nelson as Old Henry

Suddenly everyone wants a very particular set of skills. Old Henry is the latest in a line of movies where the hero turns out to be capable of things he initially appears not to be capable of at all. Before Bob Odenkirk did it in Nobody. Before Keanu Reeves in John Wick. Before Liam Neeson got the current phase underway in Taken. Before all of those there was Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven, reluctantly strapping the guns back on and doing what a killing machine does. Since then Marvel and DC have reminded us of the type with many variations of the same thing – the mild mannered type who’d rather not fight, but … Read more

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