Review: Dragged Across Concrete

Dragged Across Concrete
Cert: 18 / 159 mins / Dir. S. Craig Zahler / Trailer



Well, now I know why that trailer felt massively uneven, at least. Dragged Across Concrete is like director S. Craig Zahler absolutely fucking hates you and has made something to annoy you for two and a half hours just to prove a point.

We follow a pair of well-worn cops (Brett Ridgeman*¹ played by Mel Gibson, Anthony Lurasetti by Vince Vaughn) as they're placed on unpaid suspension by Chief Lt. Calvert (Don Johnson) for handling an arrest with slightly too much enthusiasm. In the meanwhile, they learn of an upcoming robbery involving recently-released con Henry Johns (Tory Kittles) which they may well be able to intercept - off the books, of course…

SOLID

The story itself is solid enough, but the script is self-indulgent yet artless. You know a movie is going to be challenging when the first act involves three middle-aged white guys sitting round in an office excusing racism. Moreso when those excuses go largely unchallenged (to the point where many are underlined) into acts two and three.

Zahler does not want you to like these characters and he does not want you to like Dragged Across Concrete. Then again, I imagine it's quite difficult to make a buddy-cop thriller featuring two cops that you would not want as your buddy. There are definite notes of Jackie Brown here, but with a deliberate lack of zip, of flow.

CUTTING

Zahler's script (oh yeah, he wrote this as well) is a linear series of 'and this this happened, and then that happened' events, with the most minute of background details methodically explained in conversations between characters while the story happens around them.

With some films you're worried that if you nip out to the loo, you'll miss some vital plot-point. In Dragged Across Concrete, you can be safe that by the time you get back, the protagonists will still be sitting in the same car having the same conversation, completely missing the point of what's meant to be funny*².

MÖTLEY

Why do we need a ten minute detour explaining the backstory of a bank employee who gets caught up in a heist? A lot of people get killed there and we don't hear shit about them, and none of their origin-tales have any relevance on the plot either. How is this doing anything other than giving an already bloated movie an even longer run-time?

Why are the footsteps are louder than the dialogue in this movie? Inside, outside, everywhere. It's like the audio has been recorded by taping a condenser-mic to the floor for each scene. Every single click, tap and rustle of incidental noise is far too loud, for the entirety of the film.

And perhaps most importantly, why has Vaughn's spray-in hair dye come out completely by the time they reach the garage hide-out? All he's been doing is sitting in a car.

Dragged Across Concrete is a meandering, tasteless, incoherent mess of a film, yet for all its faults I don't hate it. Apart from anything else, I don't want to give Zahler the satisfaction…

War On Everyone for sure, and probably more than a bit of Triple 9 while we're at it.



If you see a lengthy run-time as value for money and value that above likeability, sure.



This will be the film's more natural home I suspect, yes.



Not particularly.



Possible-to-likely.



There isn't.



Level 2: This film's got Don Johnson in it, and he was in Django Unchained alongside Sam 'Windu' Jackson.





*¹ You called your brittly-macho, casually racist character "Brett Ridgeman"? We get it mate, we get it. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Ref the scene in the trailer where Vaughn is eating the sandwich in the car. This is even more drawn out in the movie (that's fine, it's part of the setup), and when he finishes he's greeted with Gibson's curmudgeonly "a single red ant could have eaten that faster". But the joke, cinematically, isn't that he took a long time. Lurasetti is eating at a pace which is completely normal for a human. The joke is the amount of self-indulgent noise he makes while doing it in an otherwise silent car. The punchline should be about eating it more quietly. Then again, nothing else is quiet in this movie, so that joke would probably fall flat, too. ^{[ BACK ]}


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