Bushwick (2017)
Directed by Jonathan Milott
No — Bushwick is not especially woke, scoring 39 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
Bushwick arrives in 2017 with a premise that reads like a cable news fever dream: a secessionist militia called the New American Coalition sweeps into Brooklyn and begins clearing neighborhoods it deems insufficiently defended.
Consciousness Markers
The premise explicitly hinges on a secessionist militia targeting 'defenseless' minority neighborhoods like Bushwick, and the resistance is largely composed of the neighborhood's Black and Latino residents.
The cast is notably diverse for an action thriller, with Dave Bautista (Filipino-Greek), Angelic Zambrana, Arturo Castro, Christian Navarro, Jeremie Harris, and Myra Lucretia Taylor in prominent roles alongside Brittany Snow.
Critics noted a 'sociopolitical subtext' and the mercenary's interrogation delivers exposition about the NAC targeting minority neighborhoods, though the film largely prioritizes shoot-'em-up action over messaging.
Lucy is a female graduate student who is trained to fight and shoot and becomes a resistance participant, but the film offers no explicit feminist thesis or commentary.
No LGBTQ+ characters, themes, or subtext appear anywhere in the film.
No environmental or climate themes are present; the conflict is political and military.
The antagonists are a secessionist political coalition, not a capitalist or corporate force, and no economic critique is offered.
No body-positivity themes or messaging appear in the film.
No neurodivergent characters or themes are depicted.
The film is a fictional near-future invasion scenario, not a reworking of actual historical events.
Why it received this score
Bushwick arrives in 2017 with a premise that reads like a cable news fever dream: a secessionist militia called the New American Coalition sweeps into Brooklyn and begins clearing neighborhoods it deems insufficiently defended. The film follows Lucy, a civil engineering graduate student, and Stupe, a former Navy corpsman, as they pick through the rubble toward an evacuation point in Queens. Directors Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion keep the camera close and the geography tight, and the result is a lean, grubby B-movie that occasionally forgets it has ideas. The cast is unusually varied for this sort of genre exercise, with Dave Bautista anchoring alongside Brittany Snow and a supporting bench that includes Angelic Zambrana, Arturo Castro, Christian Navarro, Jeremie Harris, and Myra Lucretia Taylor. None of them are asked to announce their presence. They simply occupy the frame, which is its own modest achievement.
The political architecture is where the film gets interesting, and where it also gets impatient. The NAC's strategy hinges on the assumption that minority neighborhoods will fold without a fight, a calculation the residents of Bushwick spend ninety minutes disproving with small arms. That is a real thesis, delivered mostly through one interrogation scene and a scattering of street-level skirmishes. Lucy learns to fire a weapon and patch a wound, and she participates in the resistance without anyone pausing to remark on the novelty of it. The film offers no explicit argument about gender, no economic critique of the forces behind the invasion, and no interest whatsoever in the environment, the body, or the mind. The antagonists are a political coalition, not a boardroom. The subtext is present, but it is subtext, and the film would clearly rather be shooting.
What remains is a competent siege picture with a conscience it cannot quite articulate. Critics at the time noted the sociopolitical weight and then noted, correctly, that the action keeps shoving it aside. The expository monologue about defenseless minorities lands with a thud because it is doing the work the screenplay should have distributed elsewhere. Still, the film never lectures at length, never sermonizes, and never mistakes itself for a documentary about the present. It is a genre exercise with a chip on its shoulder, and it knows better than to explain the chip.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
When an unknown military force invades Bushwick, a Brooklyn neighborhood, young student Lucy and war veteran Stupe must rely on each other to escape and survive.
Questions about Bushwick
Is Bushwick woke?
No — Bushwick is not especially woke, scoring 39 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Based.
Does Bushwick have any woke elements?
4 of the 10 markers register at 30 or above, led by Racial Consciousness (65), Representation Casting (60) and Lecture Energy (35). On Racial Consciousness: The premise explicitly hinges on a secessionist militia targeting 'defenseless' minority neighborhoods like Bushwick, and the resistance is largely composed of the neighborhood's Black and Latino residents.
How does Bushwick compare to other 2017 movies?
It ranks #49 of the 309 films from 2017 we've scored; their average is 19. The wokest is I Am Not Your Negro (92).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.