According to Melvin Dismukes, who is depicted prominently in the film, Detroit "is 99.5% accurate as to what went down at the Algiers and in the city at the time."[49] However, the Los Angeles Times wrote that "Bigelow does say there are moments of fiction, and Boal notes instances of 'pure screenwriting.' Some facts are contested within accounts; others were changed for the screen", and then raised the question: "Does a disclaimer at the end sufficiently cover fictional manipulations in an ostensibly true story?"[50] Variety went so far as to state that Bigelow and Boal "changed names [of characters] so as to enjoy other creative liberties in the storytelling."[51] One such subject whose name was dropped in favor of a fictional one is lawyer Norman Lippitt (played in the film by actor John Krasinski under the name Auerbach).[52] Three victims of the Algiers Motel incident were excluded from the film: James Sortor, Roderick Davis (a member of The Dramatics), and Charles Moore (a man in his early 40s whose very presence at the motel that evening was among the many things that were called into question after the fact). The film also does not include the Peoples Tribunal that was held to protest the incident at the Reverend Albert Cleage's church.
In response to the historical criticism, Boal said: "I employed poetic license, under a self-imposed rule to never stray from what I understood to be the underlying truth of a scene or an event. This script is built on a sturdy base of journalism and history, but it is not the same as journalism or history, nor does it aspire to be. As a screenwriter, I take the responsibility of being the creator of a tale, of transforming these raw materials into a drama."[53]
