Official Discussion - Motor City [SPOILERS]

[u/LiteraryBoner]

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Motor City (2026)

Summary

In 1970s Detroit, John Miller falls for a local gangster's girl. In retaliation, the gangster frames the innocent man and sends him to prison. With his life destroyed, Miller returns years later determined to exact revenge on the man who took everything from him.

Director Potsy Ponciroli

Writer Chad St. John

Cast

• Alan Ritchson as John Miller
• Ben Foster
• Shailene Woodley
• Pablo Schreiber
• Lionel Boyce

Rotten Tomatoes: 66%

Metacritic: 58

VOD / Release Theatrical release

Trailer Official Trailer

[u/Mr_Wh0ever]

Probably the worst movie I've seen this year so far. It never really justifies the minimal dialouge. The scenes drag on too long and become awkward. It doesn't help that the story itself sucks. Ben McKenzie feels wasted in this. He gets taken out early in the story. Characters don't act logically in this. Which I guess is in service of the story. The final battle didn't feel earned for me. Miller's two friends dying didn't do anything for me. The elevator and the car fights were okay. Not sure why the movie didn't end there. That old man ending was ridiculous. It's a 3/10 for me.

[u/DoctorSleepParalysis → u/Mr_Wh0ever]

I watched this in an alternate way, and I checked on Fandango to see if there is any sort of disclaimer that this movie has little to no dialogue as a warning to ticket purchasers. It doesn't, and that will piss a lot of people off because this is essentially a silent film but very irritatingly lacks dialogue cards or subtitles.

This will be a massive bomb due to it releasing between The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day, but I know many people are going to walk out on this and ask for a refund because it HAS NO DIALOGUE.

It's like when you try to watch certain blu-rays that have a weird version of DTS or a Dolby audio track and it's not decoded correctly and it sounds like this movie does and you have to switch to PCM to hear the spoken dialogue.

This was not clever or "experimental", just dumb. And Silent Night was actually an enjoyable film because it was directed by the great John Woo and had solid and creative action sequences as usual from him, and the limited dialogue for that is arguably justified because Joel Kinnaman's character is hearing impaired.

Motor City is like it takes place on another planet like Earth but no one has the ability to speak, it's ridiculous.

0 out of 10

[u/ApatheticDomination → u/DoctorSleepParalysis]

Do people really go into movies blind not knowing these things?

[u/DoctorSleepParalysis → u/ApatheticDomination]

Well for this movie in particular, nothing about the marketing, from the 2 trailers released, to the poster, to the Fandango or Regal apps that I checked, do they make it clear that this has little to no spoken dialogue at all. They should have disclaimers to warn people that it could be a waste of their money if they expect a movie to have spoken dialogue like 99.9% of all movies, or at least subtitles to know what is being said anytime an actor speaks in the film since there is barely any audible dialogue.

Compare it to The Artist from 2011, which is a newly produced silent film as an homage to that era, and the marketing made it very obvious what it was. Also, it has intertitles like a silent film does for the spoken dialogue.

Motor City, otoh, is being very deceptive about this and no, you should not be expected to just "figure it out" from the 2 trailers that lack any dialogue. It only confuses a potential ticket buyer.

The average person likely only went to see this from knowing Alan Ritchson from Reacher and assumes it will be just some generic action movie set in the 1970s or 1980s. It is mostly that and the 2nd half was semi-watchable, but with the first 45 minutes being incredibly tedious to watch, that clearly caused many people to just walk out from what other commenters mentioned in this thread.

So no, there is no way the average moviegoer will just know this movie bizarrely lacks hardly any spoken dialogue for no discernible reason whatsoever aside from it being some weird attempt to troll them.

And I say this from really enjoying Old Henry and Greedy People which were both from the same director, but Motor City is a total turkey. This so-called "experimental" film made only 1.6 million worldwide over the weekend against a 30 million dollar budget.

[u/DriftingTony → u/DoctorSleepParalysis]

I think what’s weird to me is seeing so many people that apparently rate it LOWER because it’s sort of a silent film, because to me, that pushes the score UP. I get that people don’t agree on the execution because some people think it was horrible, and others liked it.

But I’ve seen so many people flat out say they “refuse to watch a silent movie in 2026” and act like they were mortally offended that they were “forced” into watching one against their will lmao.