Vince Vaughn and Mel Gibson star as problematic cops who were caught on camera and then resort to increasingly horrible things in Dragged Across Concrete.
The violence comes in bursts. It is brutal. All of the effects are physical and may make you physically ill. Is it a good movie?
Dragged Across Concrete has great performances. Dragged Across Concrete is unrelentingly cruel. Dragged Across Concrete is a brutal flick that runs damn near three hours. It is, as you may have guessed… a mixed bag.
And it’s Halloween film #9.
S. Craig Zahler has made three hyper-distinct films that many genre fans love/appreciate:
A horror-western called Bone Tomahawk (2015), a flick about a boxer turned drug runner in the (horror) prison film Brawl in Cell Block 99 and now in this the year of Our Lord 2018… comes Dragged Across Concrete (2018) – arguably his entry as horror/grindhouse-crooked cop flick.
If you like those films, stop reading here… just go see it, you’re pretty much the audience for this.
The same problems that plague the other films are present here, perhaps more amplified (to me) because the crooked cop sub-genre is rich with material and — I’ve seen a ton of them.
The good: the performers are all fully committed, the effects are well-orchestrated, and you definitely hate the characters you’re supposed to hate (AKA the bulk of the characters on screen)
The bad: Since he’s a former (?) cinematographer, I have no idea why Zahler enjoys shooting digitally. Every single shot is trying to emulate something only film can accomplish. It is drenched and oversaturated and it often appears the color dial-ins were done to scrub mistakes that could have been addressed in camera or with a proper lighting rig. The script is… laughably amateurish for the heady material he’s tackling. And, frankly, the music which never ever is noticeably bad in most films… is a bunch of faux R&B executed primarily by Zahler and his songwriting partner with vocals by famous R&B artists. It’s… a mess.
The script meanders and often introduces characters at points that — in a novel, might be acceptable… but on film… woof.
Some of Zahler’s ‘novelistic exploitation’ style are semi-dead-end moments or fall totally flat. Dialogue that is meant to be faux-edgy/and hyper-realistic/Tarantino-esque comes across as my friend put it… ‘Off Off Off Off Off Broadway”.
Putting a new main character into play for 12 minutes randomly not only takes away from the experience, it makes it seem like the filmmaker got bored with his own movie and then imagined a short film to toss in just for the fuck of it.
Vaughn and Mel give it their all. Michael Jai White is great in his supporting role. Really, no thespian slacks. But you can only do so much with subpar material…
Oh, Don Johnson manages to steal the show in his short time on screen.
But, when doesn’t he?
During the Q&A it sounded as if they tried to make everything word perfect to the script and that was definitely to the detriment of the overall project.
A looser version of this with some heavy editing really could have been great.
That said…
If you love dialogue-riddled stakeouts, exploding body parts, a robbery scene that’s well-orchestrated, more stakeouts, and longggg tense scenes, hyper-violence, and some real realllll grim stuff… this might be a movie for you.
The flick plays out somewhere between a cop film and a horror film… so I’m counting it as a horror flick, obviously.
Tis the season.
And… It was a bit of a nightmare to endure.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was marketed as the ‘feel bad movie’ of Christmas 2011.
Dragged Across Concrete should have borrowed that tagline for their marketing.
I feel like I need a shower.
One dollar, I guess.
Recommendations for better viewing; Bad Lieutenant (1992), Payback (1999), Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)