We Got This Covered
If Detour is an uneven film, it still has much to recommend. Few classic noirs are really good films – they’re B-pictures, filled with bad women, vicious thugs, and anti-heroes puffing on cigarettes. Detour borrows its stylization, but it does so to excellent effect. Whole sections pop with the energy and vitality of a quality B-picture. The twists and turns of the narrative are handled capably; the construction of the images and intercutting of different sections of the story indicate a deft if slightly inexperienced hand. Detour is not quite great, but it is one crazy mile along the road.
