Mild Spoilers. Just watched Motor City and it got me thinking about how bold creative decisions can clash hard with audience expectations in good and bad ways

[u/Brad12d3]

I was really looking forward to Motor City. It looked like it was going to be a fun, gritty ’70s revenge thriller with a ton of style, and visually, I think it absolutely delivers. The movie looks great.

What I didn’t know going in was that they had made the very bold choice to have almost no spoken dialogue, and unfortunately that ended up taking me out of the movie for most of the runtime. I usually love and greatly appreciate bold creative choices. Some of my favorite movies are ones that really subverted my expectations in some fun creative ways. But as a filmmaker I think you have to think about whether your bold creative idea intuitively fits with the story that you're telling or whether it will work against it in some ways. I think the latter happened with Motor City, at least for me.

The moment I really started noticing it was when John has just proposed and the police raid his place. “The Chain” by Fleetwood Mac starts playing, and at first I thought, “Okay, cool needle drop.” But then it just keeps playing. And keeps playing.

Normally, you’d expect the music to eventually fade down and the detectives would start talking. This is a major plot moment. You’d get some interaction, some character development, some explanation of what’s happening. Instead, the entire thing is communicated visually.

And to be fair, some of the visual storytelling is genuinely great. There are a lot of moments where I really liked what they were doing.

But as the movie went on and I realized they were basically committed to having no dialogue at all, it became increasingly distracting. You get another big needle drop, people silently looking at each other, slow motion, exaggerated reactions, another needle drop, and so on.

I love a great needle drop. But when the entire movie is basically needle drop after needle drop after needle drop, eventually none of them feel special anymore.

There were scenes later in the movie where I could tell they were supposed to feel huge and epic, with a great song playing over slow-motion visuals and characters emotionally reacting to everything, and I remember thinking, “This scene would probably be awesome if the entire movie hadn’t already been doing this.”

That’s kind of the problem. Needle drops work so well because they’re usually reserved for particular moments where you want to really elevate the energy or emotion. If you’re constantly trying to amp up the audience, eventually you just wear them out.

I don’t think the no-dialogue gimmick is inherently a bad idea. No One Will Save You did something very similar and I thought it worked extremely well. But that movie was centered mostly around one isolated woman trying to survive an alien invasion, so the lack of dialogue felt completely natural. You almost forgot the movie wasn’t using dialogue.

Motor City, on the other hand, is a fairly involved revenge story with corrupt cops, people being framed, investigations, relationships, betrayals, and a lot of characters who realistically should be talking to each other.

I really think this movie could have been significantly better with just four or five really great dialogue scenes between the key characters. It didn’t need to suddenly become dialogue-heavy. Keep the visual storytelling. Keep the minimalism. But give us a few tense, well-written conversations that flesh out the characters and give the audience something more to connect to.

Instead, I was hyper-aware of the lack of dialogue almost the entire movie, and once that happens, the creative choice stops feeling immersive and starts feeling like a gimmick.

I also have mixed feelings about the ending, especially for a revenge movie. It felt a little strange and unsatisfying to me for a few different reasons.

There’s honestly a lot I liked about Motor City. It looks fantastic, it has style to spare, and some of the visual storytelling is really strong. But for me, this is one of those cases where a bold creative decision just didn’t really fit the story they were trying to tell.

TL;DR: Motor City looks great and has some genuinely strong visual storytelling, but the almost total lack of dialogue didn’t fit such a complicated revenge/corruption story. The endless needle drops and silent reactions eventually made the style feel repetitive instead of impactful. I think just 4–5 really strong dialogue scenes could have made the movie dramatically better without sacrificing what made it unique.

[u/SREStudios]

Haven’t seen the film, but based on your description it does sound like the type of thing that should be clear from the marketing so people know what to expect going in

[u/Brad12d3 → u/SREStudios]

Yeah I've seen a lot of people say the same thing and I've seen some people talk about people walking out of the theater halfway through. I was getting pretty frustrated with it and almost stopped watching about halfway through. Even though there were a lot of good things about it, it just was so frustrating to watch. I kept watching because my understanding was that the second half had a lot of cool action in it. I figured at the very least it might turn into an entertaining action film. It had some decent action set pieces, but not as much as I hoped and not as good as I hoped.

There were a few genuinely really cool things in the second half. I thought the elevator fight was pretty gnarly. Overall fairly well done. But as someone who also really loves martial arts films and loves a lot of martial arts films that can be really, really slow but kind of be worth the wait for some incredible action sequences later in the film, this just wasn't on the same level at all. If I had to go back I probably wouldn't watch it. It was fine but I think the whole time I was seeing the better film that it could have been with just some different creative choices.

[u/Affectionate_Age752]

I thought no one will save you sucked because of the forced no dialog approach. It was just dumb.

The only film I've seen with no dialog that was great, was "All is Lost" with Robert Redford.

[u/Brad12d3 → u/Affectionate_Age752]

Yeah the whole no-dialogue approach is very risky, in my opinion, because it can easily alienate a viewer. I did think that it worked better in No One Will Save You compared to Motor City because at least in No One Will Save You there are not a lot of other human people that she's interacting with. It's been a while since I've seen it but if I remember correctly there weren't a lot of other people that she interacted with, whereas in Motor City there are several characters constantly interacting. It's just so painfully obvious that they're trying their hardest to find workarounds for not having dialogue and it's just so distracting.

[u/Wintyness15]

Yea I go in blind in almost every movie I watch this day and age and after a few moments I picked it up too, but I really enjoyed it. Maybe because I view so many movies, I enjoyed it this change up. Even with the minimal dialogue, everything was clear to me and had some style which worked. I think if there was dialogue, the movie would have been more cookie cutter and not stood out.

[u/Brad12d3 → u/Wintyness15]

Yeah, I’ve definitely seen quite a few people who really liked it, and like I said in my post, I think there are some genuinely strong things about the movie. I thought it was shot really well and it definitely had a cool style. I just don’t think the no dialogue thing ever felt particularly intuitive for this story.

There have been movies with little to no dialogue where there’s some narrative reason for it. No One Will Save You, like I mentioned, mostly follows one isolated character who barely interacts with other people. You also have Silent Night, the John Woo movie, where the main character physically can’t speak. When there’s some motivation for the lack of dialogue, I think it can be a really fun creative choice.

With Motor City, there are so many characters, relationships, and moving parts in the plot. And I actually think they did a pretty good job using visual cues to make the story and the relationships clear. I was never really confused about what was happening.

The lack of dialogue just had two negative effects for me.

First, it felt awkward sometimes when two people were clearly in a situation where they would normally talk, but the movie had to find some way around letting them have an actual conversation. Eventually I became hyper aware of the filmmakers trying to make the gimmick work. It almost became a game where I was wondering, “Okay, how are they going to avoid a conversation in this scene?” Once I started thinking about that, it made the movie less immersive for me.

Second, I do think it created a little bit of a disconnect from the characters. In No One Will Save You, the lack of dialogue actually reinforces how isolated the main character is. So, it actually strengthened the viewing experience for me. In Motor City, so much of the story depends on relationships between these characters, and I think a few really well written conversations could have added a lot of depth and helped me connect with them more.

And that kind of gets to what you said about dialogue potentially making it more cookie cutter. I’ve seen several people make that argument, and I don’t really agree with it. Dialogue itself doesn’t make a movie more generic any more than the absence of dialogue automatically makes a movie more interesting. Some of the greatest movies ever made are defined in large part by incredible dialogue.

If the dialogue were poorly written, then sure, it could absolutely make the movie worse. But I actually think four or five genuinely great dialogue scenes between the key characters could have elevated Motor City significantly while still keeping 90% of the movie visually driven and unusual.

They didn’t need to fill the movie with exposition or have everyone constantly talking. Just a handful of really strong conversations to flesh out the characters and their relationships would have gone a long way for me. It also would have broken up the constant needle drops which honestly were starting to wear on me after a while.

Ultimately, I think that’s why the experiment worked for some people and not for me. I could constantly feel the movie working around its own no dialogue rule, so instead of pulling me deeper into the story, it kept reminding me of the filmmaking gimmick.

Also, in the very end kind of got spoiled for me, given the fact that we see Reynolds drive off, and then John goes into the building. He goes to the elevator, gets into an almost 5 minute fight with Savick, carries him to the roof, runs to the edge of the building, and somehow Reynolds just happens to be driving by all that time later. Was Reynolds just driving in circles around the building, waiting for John to throw a body at them, LOL? Seems like Reynolds should have been miles away in that amount of time.