Motor City is a Masterpiece

If you always wanted to see a solid bloody action movie with no words, Motor City is for you.

The movie has exactly six lines of dialogue. Some critiques will say it's five, but the word "Hi!" uttered by two different characters, even though it's the same word, is still two lines of dialogue. By the same token, they should count the "I love you!" line uttered twice with different levels of intensity as one line and then it will be just four total lines. But does it really matter when the movie is was conceived as non-verbal?

The movie has a definite graphic novel feel to it, so the first thing I wanted to check after watching it was if it was based on a book or a graphic novel. Turns out, no.

Motor City is an original screenplay by Chad St. John, the screenwriter behind London Has Fallen. The script became well known in Hollywood after appearing on the 2009 Black List, an annual survey of the best unproduced screenplays. It spent many years in development, being attached to various actors for the lead role at different times, including Chris Evans, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jeremy Renner, Dominic Cooper, and Gerard Butler. For the villains, high-profile actors like Gary Oldman and Adrien Brody were previously attached to play the film's primary antagonists before the roles finally went to Ben Foster and Pablo Schreiber. And director Albert Hughes (The Book of Eli) spent years trying to get the movie off the ground before it was finally directed by Potsy Ponciroli and released on July 24, 2026.

The force that kicked it into the production gear was Alan Ritchson, both the lead actor and producer of the movie. When his team sent over the project, which had famously been trapped in Hollywood "development hell" for roughly 15 years, Ritchson read it in his office in one gulp and was immediately captivated. After realizing that the script was a "masterpiece," he instantly called his agents and asked, "What did you just find me? This is incredible," aggressively pushing to champion and make the movie.

Ritchson already had enough clout to do so, with his lead role in the highly successful Amazon Prime TV show Reacher that is about to release its fourth season this August. I'm sure his reputation as an actions star helped secure the Motor City's production budget of $30 million.

Set in the 1970s Detroit, Motor City is an ultimate revenge movie where the main character is framed in a drug bust for the love of his life he previously rescued from a drug dealer. It is a good love-centered action flick, full of dirty cops, loyalties and betrayals, car chases and elevator fights that will overpower you with broken and torn limbs, and Tarantinoesque blood-and-gore violence. Exactly like a colorful graphic novel that came to life on the screen.

What I particularly liked about the movie was its soundtrack. I have no idea how Ritchson persuaded Jack White of White Stripes to be the executive music producer for the movie but this was the perfect alignment. White has written the captivating main soundtrack, selected the best songs from the 1970s that carried the film for sound when the dialogue was absent, and even made a cameo appearance as a restaurant piano player in a critical scene where I had the feeling he resisted the great temptation of commenting on it for me from within the movie.

Overall, I loved the movie. I am upset that it made only $1.7 million on its opening weekend. I suspect one of the things that may have doomed it was Alan Ritchson coming out in strong support of the full Epstein file release just weeks before the movie was released, making it "political" for die-hard Trump fans, many of whom are also action movie fans.

The leading critics are split in their reviews, with some absolutely loving it while others hating it to the point of trashing it. Nothing in between it seems. The Rotten Tomatoes viewer score is 63%. I liked the movie so much that it moved me to create a Rotten Tomatoes account to leave my own review.

Here's a sampling of the positive reviews from the established critics, not amateurs like myself:

• The Playlist (Score: 91/100): Critic Ankit Jhunjhunwala praised the movie as a massive win for its star. He noted that the film serves as "another showcase for the above-the-title billed Alan Ritchson as a credible, cinematic leading man," highlighting that the bloody action sequences, larger-than-life performances, and heavy muscles perfectly fill the screen without the need for talking.

• Variety (Score: 80/100): Veteran critic Owen Gleiberman was highly impressed by the movie’s unique auditory and visual ambition. He wrote that Motor City, at its best, "qualifies as a true immersive cinematic experience" and concluded that while it is a movie almost entirely without words, "it speaks."

• Action-Flix (4 out of 5 Stars): Critic John M. Jerva celebrated the film as "pure noirish ultra-violent crime cinema on visceral overload." He lauded Ritchson’s ability to "radiate massive sympathy" entirely through physical presence and intensity, comparing the raw throw-back action to 1980s classics from Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger.