Film Review: Motor City

Motor City
Director: Potsy Ponciroli
Stampede Ventures
In Theaters 07.24.2026

A great film must be very well made, but a well-made film isn’t always great, and the action genre has become completely saturated with style-over-substance revenge thrillers. Motor City is an extreme example of brawny brutality that’s impressively executed but emotionally flat.

In 1970s Detroit, John Miller (Alan Ritchson, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Reacher), an autoworker who is roughly the size of a Buick, falls head over heels in love with the beautiful Sophia (Shailene Woodley, The Descendants, The Fault in Our Stars), all to the sounds of iconic 70s rock. Unfortunately for John, he’s not the only one who’s attached to Sophia. Reynolds, a gangster who is so nasty, possessive and devoid of a conscience that he has to be played by Ben Foster (Leave No Trace, Hell or High Water), isn’t ready to let Sophia move on, and he frames John for drug trafficking, sending him to prison for 25 years. But John doesn’t give up easily, and he spends his time in prison plotting his vengeance. 

Director Potsy Ponciroli (Old Henry) clearly loves the funky 70s, and not just the movies. Chad St. John‘s lean, largely dialogue-free script gives Ponciroli an opportunity to bask in the chance to use needle drop after needle drop of songs from the era, which sometimes feels motivated and other times results in the Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin” blaring in a police station for no discernible reason. As was the case in John Woo‘s 2023 film Silent Night, the gimmick of telling the story without dialogue is a mixed bag, giving us a lot of eye candy and lavish staging but also taking a paper-thin storyline and dragging it out feature-length. Both films suffer from an excruciatingly long and symptomatic setup, keeping everything obvious and predictable for the sake of clarity, and while Motor City gives us more over-the-top, gonzo fun than Woo’s film, there’s less of an investment in the emotional stakes here. 

The heart of the conflict is in the tug of war over Sophia, and Ponciroli seizes the moment to convey the profound depth of feeling between these two strong-willed men and the victimized Sophia by finding opportunities to pointedly remind us that there’s more than one reason these men want her (two, specifically, and the point is made very clearly the first time). The opening action sequence on top of a roof is exciting and attention grabbing, though the choice of Bowie’s “Cat People (Putting Out Fire)” as the song to build it around is a flawed one, less because it didn’t come out until 1982 than because while Ritchson makes a suitably imposing figure, he can’t compete with Mélanie Laurent in a red dress preparing to burn a theater full of Nazis in 2009’s Inglorious Basterds. The sequence is also a flash forward, and by the time we see it repeated in the film’s third act, it feels like a replay of a replay. Still, Ponciroli has considerable flair (a short but fierce mano a mano inside an elevator is terrific), and John Matysiak‘s 70s throwback cinematography is divine. 

Ritchson makes for a formidable antihero who is somewhere between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis, and when he’s not being upstaged by his own rather unconvincing wigs, his presence nicely carries the film. Woodley deserves a better role, but she throws herself into the performance with gusto and does a lot of the storytelling work with her expressive face and the occasional brief line of dialogue thrown (even with bloody violence and partial nudity, you can’t have a salute to 70s action spectacle without a few well-placed F-bombs). Foster is effective, but he’s become so specialized at playing the same slimy, short-fused, misogynistic villain over and over again (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see Christy or King Ivory. Or better yet, don’t). Ben McKenzie (The O.C., Gotham) briefly shows up as a police detective but is given nothing to do but pout, look outraged and have sideburns.

Despite all its shortcomings, Motor City is an energetic, testosterone-fueled action picture that only falls short of being a satisfying guilty pleasure because it desperately needs to lose about 15 minutes from its runtime. It does a better job of proving that Ponciroli can handle a lot of moving pieces and bigger budget than we’ve seen him work with before than it does in telling a strong story, and if he gets a chance to make a movie that combines the resources of Motor City and the smart screenwriting of Old Henry, that will be something special indeed. In the meantime, if explosions, bone-crushing fights, bloody gunplay, classic rock and the chance to check out Woodley’s – I’m gonna go with “charms” – are all you need to make you feel like your money was well spent, Motor City should rev up your engine, but it gets disappointingly low mileage to the gallon. –Patrick Gibbs

Read more film reviews by Patrick Gibbs:
Film Review: Her Private Hell
Film Review: The Odyssey

If you enjoy SLUG’s film reviews, consider joining out community of donors!