{"id":14769,"date":"2026-07-23T00:26:24","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T04:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=14769"},"modified":"2026-07-23T00:26:29","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T04:26:29","slug":"motor-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2026\/07\/23\/motor-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Motor City"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Motor City<\/strong> (2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 IFC\/Action-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 103 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody violence, some grisly images, drug content, sexuality\/nudity, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Potsy Ponciroli\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Chad St. John\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Steve Jablonsky\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: John Matysiak\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: July 24, 2026 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Alan Ritchson, Ben Foster, Pablo Schreiber, Lionel Boyce, Shailene Woodley, Ben McKenzie, Amar Chadha-Patel, Dominic Bogart, Mister Fitzgerald, Rafael Cebrian, Jack White.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Does anybody mind if I start my review of Motor City <\/strong>at the end? I promise not to drop any spoilers. Great, thanks.<\/p>\n

\u00a0What\u2019s the difference between a good movie and a great movie? Sometimes it\u2019s just one scene. In this particular case, it\u2019s a completely unnecessary final scene, an epilogue set a few decades after the main action of the film. It\u2019s an unfortunate one step too far for director Potsy Ponciroli (Greedy People). He had the perfect ending right in front of him. Please don\u2019t misunderstand. Motor City<\/strong> is a good movie. It would be a better movie if he cut that one scene. He could always include it as a Special Feature on the physical media release.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Here\u2019s the main thing you need to know about Motor City<\/strong>, a gritty crime thriller set in 1970s Detroit. There is practically NO dialogue except for a few words scattered throughout. The story is driven by the characters\u2019 actions rather than their words. Sitting in the passenger seat is a banger of a soundtrack of 70s hits by Fleetwood Mac (\u201cThe Chain\u201d), Bill Withers (\u201cLovely Day\u201d), Foxy (\u201cGet Off\u201d), Donna Summer (\u201cI Feel Love\u201d) and Starbuck (\u201cMoonlight Feels Right\u201d). For whatever reason, the 1982 David Bowie song \u201cPutting Out Fire\u201d opens the film. It\u2019s a musical anachronism that\u2019s nonetheless used to great effect.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Alan Ritchson of TV\u2019s Reacher plays John Miller, an ex-con who makes the mistake of taking up with Sophia (Woodley, The Fault in Our Stars), the girlfriend of psychotic crime boss Reynolds (Foster, Hell or High Water). With help from corrupt detective Savick (Schreiber, Den of Thieves), he frames Miller and gets him sent to prison for 25 years. Sophia dumps him and is soon back with Reynolds. With no chance of having his name cleared, Miller escapes with just one thing on his mind, revenge.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The concept of a movie without dialogue isn\u2019t new. Remember the John Woo actioner Silent Night from a few years back? It similarly dealt with a protagonist looking for revenge against violent criminals who wronged him. When I first heard Motor City<\/strong> would be dialogue-free (about an hour before show time), I wasn\u2019t exactly thrilled. I thought Silent Night was good, but a one-and-done concept. It didn\u2019t exactly set the box office on fire ($8M domestic\/$11M global). Most people just didn\u2019t get it. I couldn\u2019t believe another filmmaker was rolling the dice on a narrative device that\u2019s likely to alienate mainstream audiences the same way it did in 2023. It\u2019s a bold creative move that ends up working better than it should.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Motor City <\/strong>has a cool cast. What\u2019s better, all of them turn in solid performances. It\u2019s especially challenging here because they have to employ a different acting style. Without the support of spoken dialogue, they have to convey their emotions with gestures and facial expression. You can see the hurt and anger written all over Ritchson\u2019s character, an innocent man wronged by a powerful adversary supported by a corrupt system. I haven\u2019t watched him in Reacher yet, but it seems to me he could be the next big action movie star. He has the size and the skills to pull it off. Foster is at his best playing unhinged characters (e.g. Jake in Alpha Dog). He does it again in Motor City<\/strong>. To be blunt, Reynolds is a creep in polyester. You really want to see the SOB get his comeuppance. Woodley is pretty good as the girlfriend who elicits zero sympathy. To be blunt again, she\u2019s a whore. It doesn\u2019t take her all that long to get back with Reynolds and enjoy the spoils of his drug empire. I lost all respect for her character after that.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There is plenty of action and bloody violence in Motor City<\/strong>. Miller\u2019s escape from prison, with outside help from a couple of friends, is thrilling. The climax just rocks! Miller and his two associates show up at Reynolds\u2019 base of operations and wage war. The most memorable bit has one of the bad guys dealing with his severed leg. The audience was laughing at that one. It\u2019s all tied together by a gritty 70s grindhouse aesthetic. It looks just like a movie that would play at a grimy theater on 42nd<\/sup> Street back in the day.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Motor City<\/strong> occasionally falls back on hokey bits like Mitchell screaming into a sink filled with water, but it doesn\u2019t hurt the overall movie in any way. The only thing that does is the aforementioned epilogue. It\u2019s not needed; it\u2019s that simple. Aside from that, Motor City<\/strong> is solid B-movie entertainment. It\u2019s one of those rare films that\u2019s all action and (almost) no talk.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Motor City (2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 IFC\/Action-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 103 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong bloody violence, some grisly images, drug content, sexuality\/nudity, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Potsy Ponciroli\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Chad St. John\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Steve Jablonsky\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: John Matysiak\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: July 24, 2026 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Alan Ritchson, Ben Foster, Pablo Schreiber, Lionel Boyce, Shailene Woodley, Ben McKenzie, Amar Chadha-Patel, Dominic Bogart, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14770,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-now-playing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Motor-City-POSTER.jpg?fit=620%2C918&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14769"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14773,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14769\/revisions\/14773"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}