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Before he ever starred in "Motor City," the Motor City was good to Alan Ritchson.
The hulking "Reacher" star, who lives just outside of Nashville, has spent a good portion of the last decade filming projects — including the Amazon Prime Video series that made him a star — in the Toronto area. Driving up from Tennessee, he's made Detroit his regular stopover, and he's gotten used to cozying up to the blackjack tables inside the MGM Grand Casino.
"I walked in with three the last time I was there" — that's $3,000, to be clear — "and at $88,000, I was like, at some point, I have to start losing. But I could not lose that night," says Ritchson, during a recent Zoom call from New York. "I am so lucky in that casino, it's crazy!"
Eventually he walked away, nearly $100,000 richer, but his luck ran out after he was expecting to get comped a room for the night and it never happened. "So I went and took a duffel bag of cash and crashed at a motel down the street," Ritchson says, laughing.
The highs and lows of a night at the blackjack table are nothing compared to what Ritchson's character goes through in "Motor City," the audacious, heavily stylized and mostly dialogue-free Detroit-set revenge saga which opens in theaters Friday.
Ritchson stars as John Miller, a man who goes to prison after he's framed for a crime he didn't commit, and has to bust himself out in order to rescue his fiancée, Sophia (Shailene Woodley) from the clutches of Reynolds (Ben Foster), a sleazy drug kingpin.
"Motor City" is set in 1970s Detroit but was filmed in northern New Jersey, as Michigan's lack of tax credits on film productions made shooting in the city financially unfeasible.
Some pickup shots were filmed in Detroit, though, and the Fox Theatre's marquee and rooftop make an appearance — even if the spire atop the building, which is featured prominently in the movie, didn't arrive until 2006.
Consider it a heightened sense of reality, which fits the movie's grand sense of drama.
Revving up
The "Motor City" script, which was written by Chad St. John ("London Has Fallen"), had been kicking around Hollywood for two decades, and at one time was attached to director Albert Hughes, one-half of the Detroit-born Hughes Brothers directing duo ("Menace II Society").
It went through various fits and starts — over the years, Jake Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman and Adrien Brody were involved in versions of the movie that didn't come to pass — before it landed in the hands of director Potsy Ponciroli.
Ponciroli treats the entire project like an epic, with large scale characters and action; a climactic knock-down, drag-out fight inside of an elevator ranks among the most violent, intense sequences to hit screens this year.
"When I first pitched it, I was going for a noir comic book that was never a comic," says Ponciroli, a Detroit ballcap on his head, over Zoom. "We wanted some really big imagery and music. It is, in a sense, a rock opera."
The film lands evocative music cues from David Bowie, Donna Summer, Bill Withers, the Moody Blues and more.
Ponciroli, who has directed music videos for Colt Ford, Yelawolf and Bubba Sparxxx (he also directed the movies "Old Henry" and "Greedy People"), visited Detroit in spring 2024, before filming began, to get a sense of the city and its community.
"I went out there just to kind of feel Detroit and to see it," says the Los Angeles-born director, 45. "I'd been there before, but it had been awhile. So I really just wandered around. I walked all through downtown, I walked the riverfront, just to kind of take in the energy of that city. And it's resilient. It's an impressive city."
He landed a Detroit "sherpa" for the project in Jack White, who makes a small cameo in the movie as a piano player. He's also an executive producer on the project, and Ponciroli says White helped make sure the movie passed the Detroit vibe check.
"He was just kind of a voice on all things," Ponciroli says of the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer. "He grew up there, and he can speak to the authenticity of it. So he was like an advisor, in a sense, trying to keep it as true to Detroit as we could."
In the movie, mocked up show posters for Thin Lizzy and Queen at Cobo, as well as a Frank Zappa show at the arena and a Styx and Cheap Trick concert at the Masonic, appear in the backgrounds of some shots.
In one scene, the Fox Theatre marquee advertises a Ramones and Sonic's Rendezvous Band concert that doesn't appear to have happened at the venue. But the movie version of the Fox is also situated directly across the road from another building — a gaffe of which Ponciroli is aware — and besides, no one is pretending "Motor City" is a documentary.
Speaking without words
Ritchson, 43, received the movie's script just as "Reacher" was starting to take off. He immediately knew he wanted to be a part of it, he says.
"I remember reading it, I was in my office, and I was totally engrossed. It was like the best kind of novel," says the North Dakota-born actor. "I knew, man. So I called my team and I was like, 'I'm in, and how do I champion this in the biggest way to make this happen?'"
The film's lack of dialogue — there are only about 30 words spoken in the entire movie, give or take — means Ritchson had to rely on his physicality, motions both big and small, to help advance the plot forward. He also had to sell the love story at the center of the movie with something other than words.
"There was some part of me where I was like, man, I hope I'm able to honor the emotional journey in a way that translates, 'cuz I'm not gonna overcook it," Ritchson says. "I'm gonna just live in the feelings that I'm feeling and hope it comes across, right? And that's all you can do."
Aside from the challenge of not having words, there was one benefit for Ritchson.
"It was nice not having to memorize a ton of dialogue," he says.
Ponciroli helped him find the performance without words, and he talked with Ritchson at length about overacting versus underacting, he says.
"Alan's one of the more observant actors I've ever worked with, and he watches everything on set," Ponciroli says. "He watches the camera, he watches when we talk about lenses. He'll ask, 'why are you filming from down here, wouldn't you want to be up here for this?' There's a filmmaker side to him that is so involved in the whole process, and he's seeing the next steps down the road, which is a really cool trait to have."
"Motor City" premiered last year at the Venice International Film Festival and also played the Toronto International Film Festival before landing a distribution deal from Independent Film Company, which is releasing the movie this weekend in approximately 1,600 theaters.
The movie is facing the second weekend of "The Odyssey" and arrives a week before the new "Spider-Man" movie hits theaters, but it comes at a time where the box office has been healthy, and audiences have shown an interest in different voices and newer modes of storytelling.
Ritchson says he wants to see the movie do well and keep riding the momentum of alternative kinds of narratives.
"I would give back every winning night of blackjack that I've ever had to see an audience show up in theaters to enjoy this movie, because it so deserves to be seen," he says. "I've never been so proud of a project in my entire life. I believe in this one."
'Motor City'
Rated R: for strong bloody violence, some grisly images, drug content, sexuality/nudity and language
Running time: 103 minutes
In theaters Friday
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Alan Ritchson talks 'Motor City,' winning big at Detroit's MGM Grand
