Alan Ritchson has been highly sought after since blowing up on Reacher, but before a new, best-yet season of the hit Prime Video series hits the 2026 TV schedule next month, we’ll have the chance to see (but not hear) him on the big screen. Motor City is a new action flick, and if you’ve ever wished you could have all brutal fights with none of the cheesy, testosterone-fueled banter, this may be the pick for you.
Potsy Ponciroli’s Motor City is virtually free of dialogue, making for a pretty unique crime thriller set in 1970s Detroit. Alan Ritchson and his co-stars — Ben Foster, Shailene Woodley and more — may not have had a lot to say, but the critics won’t shut up about the movie.
Steve Pond of The Wrap calls it a “hyper-adrenalized revenge thriller” that replaces conversation with a variety of noises and fun needle drops. Pond says:
You’ve heard of silent movies? This is a loud movie, except that it does away with words. That leaves room for lots of quiet glowering and for a bunch of grunts, groans, thuds, thwacks, oofs, crunches, screams, explosions and assorted nasty sounds. It shouldn’t work but it pretty much does, at least for those who are big enough pulp fans to go along with this wacky thrill ride. (For others, it’s safe to say that your mileage may vary.)
Even without the dialogue, Owen Gleiberman of Variety says Motor City delivers love, violence and suspense. Audiences are tasked with interpreting the characters’ looks and gestures, making this movie a “true immersive cinematic experience.”
The reason this works is that we’ve seen enough thrillers to be able to color in the essence of the dialogue ourselves; we don’t need to hear the words. And without them, we plug into the sheer presence of the actors. At times, Motor City is like a silent movie directed by Scorsese. It draws us in because it’s got a glittering underworld-opera surface, but also because the audience needs to use its noodle a bit to participate in the film’s telling.
Anzhe Zhang of Slant also calls it immersive, particularly when the soundtrack matches the action on the screen. Not limited by the restraints of a traditional story, The 2026 movie release is “exhilaratingly alive throughout its set pieces.” Zhang rates it 2.5 stars out of 4 in his Motor City review, writing:
Potsy Ponciroli’s Motor City feels like a lost B-movie from a bygone era, channeling the spirit of the vigilante films and other exploitation genres of the 1970s. Like those influences, it plays to the senses through pulse-pounding action. With essentially no dialogue and a constant use of music, the film is less a traditional story than a mood board, given the preponderance of needle drops, from Fleetwood Mac and Donna Summer to David Bowie and Bill Withers, that underscore more than just the film’s frequently inventive set pieces.
Other critics, however, grew tired of the dialogue-free gimmick, with David Rooney of THR calling the exercise “overstretched.” Alan Ritchson still brings gravitas to the project through his hulking physical presence alone, the critic says, but the supporting cast is lacking depth, and the flick is overall “rendered a bit silly by its silence.” Rooney continues:
The audacious stunt behind the project is to build an adrenaline-charged crime thriller almost entirely without dialogue. It requires skill to sustain such a conceit and Ponciroli largely pulls it off, but a stunt is exactly what it ends up being. For a while the fabulous ‘70s needle drops — Fleetwood Mac, Bill Withers, Donna Summer, the Moody Blues — keep it punchy and there’s certainly some well-staged action, notably toward the end. But you can only get so far with one-dimensional characters.
Jesse Hassenger of AV Club gives it a C, agreeing that Alan Ritchson is well-suited for the “strong and silent” character of John Miller. While the intent was ambitious, Motor City was unable to shed its clichés. Hassenger’s review reads:
Motor City boasts a couple of gnarly fights and well-staged chases, but the low-dialogue gimmick just as often lends the movie a po-faced quasi-operatic heaviness. Novelty turns to tedium as scenes repeatedly involve actors miming ancient clichés instead of reciting them. Evocative as this approach can be, especially early on, the stunt never does much for characters like Foster’s millionth off-the-shelf tortured sleazebag or, especially, the girlfriend-shaped doll inexplicably played by Woodley, the most overqualified member of a should-be-solid cast. Technical ambition doesn’t make the movie’s retrograde treatment of women ironic or clever.
Critics are definitely intrigued by the choice to silence Motor City’s characters, but they’re iffy on the end result. The movie has a score of 69% on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing, and I’ll be interested to talk about what moviegoers think of Alan Ritchson’s latest when it hits theaters on Friday, July 24.
