Alan Ritchson Is a Silent Storm in ‘Motor City' — And That's No Metaphor
He's standing in the middle of a dim Detroit street, shirt soaked in blood, knuckles red, eyes low. That's not Reacher swagger — it's something far more raw. Alan Ritchson, in the first official image from Motor City, looks less like a Hollywood action star and more like a man who's been dragged through hell, left speechless, and handed a weapon.
That's not just mood. It's the movie.
Potsy Ponciroli's Motor City — officially announced as part of the 2025 Venice Film Festival lineup — is a revenge thriller with barely any words. According to Ponciroli's Instagram post confirming the selection, the 1970s-set feature contains only four lines of dialogue. Ben Foster, Ritchson's co-star, bumped that up to five in a recent sit-down with Collider — and he wasn't joking.
This isn't action as we know it. This is action reimagined as atmosphere, attitude, and pure visual aggression.
No Dialogue, Just Detroit Grit and Disco Wrath
Set in the decaying muscle of 1970s Detroit — a city already cinematic in its industrial entropy — Motor City aims to be less Taken, more Thief by way of a vinyl-warped fever dream. It's being pitched somewhere between a graphic novel, a music video, and a silent opera, depending on who you ask.
Jon Berg, president of production at Stampede Ventures (the outfit behind the film), didn't mince words. “Dynamic camera, brilliant music, muscle cars, and an immersive sound design surrounding badass action sequences,” he told Variety. It's the kind of film that leans on performance — the way opera leans on voice, or silent films leaned on faces. Except here, emotion is conveyed in body language, bruises, and the blare of Jack White's custom score.
Yes — that Jack White. Detroit's own.
White, who's reportedly crafting a full original soundtrack for the film, seems like the ideal match for a project this sonically ambitious. Foster even described the project as a “rock disco revenge film,” and you get the sense he wasn't being metaphorical. From the flared jeans and analog color palette to the classic American muscle cars likely guzzling both gas and screen time, Motor City wants to resurrect a specific moment in American mythos — then beat it half to death.
Ritchson, Rewired
Alan Ritchson has spent the last few years pummeling bad guys and punching clichés in Amazon's Reacher — and doing it well. But Motor City marks a clear left turn. Less talk. More pain. It's a risk. And it might be the smartest move of his career.
Foster agrees: “He's very tall and very muscular, and he's very handsome,” he quipped to Collider, before pivoting. “He's terrific as a mover. I think he wants to do some deeper work… and that's a joy.”
That's the keyword here — movement. Ritchson isn't playing a character who explains himself. He's not decoding a conspiracy or cracking wise over corpses. He's bleeding. He's pacing. He's reacting. That's a gamble in today's noise-heavy action market, but if Motor City sticks the landing, Ritchson may come out the other side with something actors twice his size and age rarely get: artistic credibility.
A Venice Premiere, and a Curious Future
So what does it mean that Motor City is premiering at Venice? It means the experiment is being taken seriously. You don't land a slot at one of the Big Three festivals unless you're doing something more than rehashing genre tropes with a sepia filter. And for Ponciroli — best known for Old Henry, a slow-burn Western that leaned into minimalist emotion — it's a fitting evolution.
We still don't know much about the plot. There's revenge. There's blood. There's music. Zoë Kravitz, Ben McKenzie, and Natasha McElhone round out a cast shrouded in secrecy. And we do know this: Motor City doesn't care whether you're listening. It wants you to watch — and feel — every damn second of it.
With its visual-first philosophy, stripped-down dialogue, and a frontman ready to say more with silence than most scripts manage in 90 pages, Motor City could be a defining moment for action cinema — or a fascinating failure. Either way, I'll be there for every frame.
