http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080511/ENT04/805110538/1039 - Raw, radical, provocative and filled with intelligence and heart, "Murder City" is a homemade, street-level examination of Detroit ultra-violence and its causes. It's a little long-winded and slightly uneven, but it's a gripping tale of one important fact of Motor City life that doesn't square with the narrative that the city is undergoing rebirth.Among the images are dead bodies, burning buildings, decaying blocks and junkies shooting heroin. The headliners are legendary gangsters such as Maserati Rick, who was executed while he lay in a hospital bed; White Boy Rick, the teen coke king, and Demetrius Holloway, gunned down while he shopped at the Broadway with $14,000 in his pocket.But this is no exploitation flick. There also are screens filled with statistics -- crime, unemployment, education, incarceration, police killings -- that add context to the gritty tale. It's not surprising to learn that "Murder City" creator Al Profit (Bradley) has a master's degree in economics; he has done his homework, both in locating the violence and drug use amid the city's downward-spiraling economy and in explaining how the auto industry gave way to the drug trade as a source of jobs for many black men in Detroit. His audience could be anyone from students to to social workers to crime buffs.Profit has culled dozens of visually interesting clips from new shows, including snippets of NBC anchormen John Chancellor and David Brinkley talking about Detroit. The pace is furious at times."Murder City" has none of the usual documentary experts. Among the talking heads are ex-cons, dopers and victims of crime. One pulls a .40 Glock from his waistband while he talks. They recall what it's like to point a shotgun at someone and demand their Max Julien jacket, how it feels to be stabbed in the chest and the sensation of doing crack for the first time with your relatives."We all got hooked as a family," one man says."Murder City" focuses on the era that began with the 1967 riot, but it touches on the Purple Gang of the 1930s and the vicious race riot of 1943 to make the point that 20th-Century Detroit always had a violent underside.There's a political side to the film too. One Detroiter notes that some ministers are building multimillion-dollar mega churches in neighborhoods where people are so poor the city is turning off their water."What God is this?" he asks. "Who are you worshipping?"Those are interesting questions. Overall, "Murder City" asks a serious, sensitive and complicated one: Why do Detroiters keep killing each other at such a high rate?No screenings are set, but it's probable there will be a viewing at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. If confirmed, a date will be posted at www.mocadetroit.org.