‘Motor City’ Review: Alan Ritchson Lets His Fists Do The Talking In A Scintillating Silent-Era Throwback

Motor City is an experience unlike any other. Not a single syllable is uttered until just after the 31-minute mark, and the film reportedly contains fewer than five lines of dialogue in total. The new film is an action-spectacle throwback to John Wayne and Steve McQueen: big, brawny, and stoic, to the point that a single glance or shift in posture says more than a Quentin Tarantino monologue. Well, maybe not, but it’s close.

From director Potsy Ponciroli, Motor City is a visionary work. With countless needle drops featuring disco, soul, and ’70s rock, the film is essentially a callback to the silent-film era. At the center is Alan Ritchson (Reacher), whose hulking figure, virtually speechless for the entire film, is a modern action ode to the silent film era, as if this were a Charlie Chaplin picture. Ponciroli relies heavily on the physical turn of its star, and it pays off beautifully.

Hey, before you judge, have you seen Mr. Ritchson dance? Because he can. Have you watched the jolly blond giant make people laugh? Yes, and he is hilarious. Have you heard the man sing? Well, that does not matter here, but on American Idol, we found out he sounds like a siren song from The Odyssey. Yet, none of these matter in a gritty action spectacular, but there is a reason they cast the most talented man in Hollywood, and it pays off handsomely.

What we have seen, however, is Mr. Ritchson smacking the hell out of people. Here, he does it again while bringing an emotive quality to the performance that is genuinely riveting. The result is a scintillating collision of silent-era storytelling and ’70s action filmmaking, set against a gritty, atmospheric backdrop and driven by an intoxicating rhythm from start to finish, letting its star’s fists and face do the talking.

The film follows John (Alan Ritchson), a factory worker on parole who is trying to stay on the straight and narrow. John is dating Sophia (Paradise’s Shailene Woodley), whom he met outside a bar years earlier when he pulled out a lighter to set fire to the end of her cigarette, back in the days when the size of your Zippo mattered. After stopping for some coffee and a newspaper, someone steals his car, where he keeps Sophia’s engagement ring.

In one of the year’s best scenes, he proposes, and she says yes with a kiss just as a smoking tear-gas canister sails past their heads in slow motion. The raid is led by Sergeant Savick (Halo’s Pablo Schreiber, doing his best silent Jon Bernthal impression), while a skeptical detective (Ben McKenzie) watches from the sidewalk. How did they get here? A jealous mobster (Ben Foster) planted drugs in John’s Pontiac Firebird because of his romance with Sophia.

Ponciroli sets Chad St. John’s script ablaze, one of the most visually immersive and engaging films in recent memory. There is nothing like Motor City in theaters, or streaming, because nothing combines such an intoxicating visual and sonic style. This is Ritchson‘s best role to date, keeping the action persona that made him famous, but the intentional limitations only deepen it.

Ritchson communicates his character’s grief, rage, and even humiliation through his emotive expressions, posture, and movement. Many will argue that this is simply a film in which Ponciroli turns down the volume and replaces it with a killer soundtrack, but that would be a mistake. No, the filmmakers are reassigning the purpose of dialogue to editing, cinematography, music, sound design, and the star’s physical transformations.

A visceral experiment that, through equal parts of possible luck and skill, becomes a resounding success for the theatrical senses. Filled with the grit and rhythm of the decade, with Ritchson delivering a riveting turn, Motor City is a scintillating collision of silent-cinema storytelling and ’70s vigilante cinema, letting star Alan Ritchson’s fists, face, and peak physicality speak volumes.

Motor City is now play exclusively in theaters courtesy of Independent Film Company.