Murder City

Documentary about the history of crime in Detroit

One must be very careful when bestowing names, and I approached “Murder City” with some trepidation. But Detroit’s Murder City appellation existed long before I christened it as such; after all, what could a movie about crime in Detroit be called, but “Murder City”? Since the 1970’s the word “Detroit” has been a part of the American vernacular, a useful and weighty word convenient as a tool of juxtaposition; an absolute zero of urban disaster with which to compare any other city or social phenomenon.
“Murder City” is an important film for one reason: it gives a voice to people that are rarely heard in the American media and uses the history of crime in Detroit as a backdrop for the real stories of real Detroiters, not the neatly packaged tales told to us by police, reporters, and politicians. The amazing way that the interview subjects opened their personal lives up to the world gives a truly unique look into the real way that the social disorder and economic decay in Detroit l