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Dragged Across Concrete
Aesop's fable of the tortoise and the hare teaches us that slow, steady, dogged determination always win out against stealthy and reckless bravado. Writer-director S Craig Zahler has taken this life lesson to heart, setting painfully long fuses on his first two films, blood-soaked western Bone Tomahawk and testosterone-fuelled riot Brawl In Cell Block 99. Both pictures clocked in - unnecessarily - at a buttock-numbing 129 minutes, punctuating self-consciously stylised dialogue and moments of quiet introspection with lurid splashes of sickening violence. His third feature adopts similar shock tactics to recount a bank robbery from multiple perspectives and tests our patience and physical stamina by adding half an hour to the bloated running time. I hope you're sitting very comfortably. Dragged Across Concrete delivers plenty of scraped flesh and a lot of navel-gazing as corrupt cops and morally conflicted criminals trade bullets and wisecracks against a vivid backdrop of racial tension and economic hardship. It's the kind of grimy, relentlessly downbeat portrait of mouldering society where a police lieutenant reprimands one of his men by growling: "A couple more years and you're gonna be a human steamroller covered in spikes and fuelled by bile", and an ex-con eruditely dismisses his errant father as "a yesterday who ain't worth words". Detectives Brett Ridgeman (Mel Gibson) and Anthony Lurasetti (Vince Vaughn) bend the law they are supposed to uphold. Their heavy-handed treatment of one suspect is captured on film and sparks a debate about police brutality on various news channels. "Digital eyes are out there," despairs Lieutenant Calvert (Don Johnson), who is forced to suspend Ridgeman and Lurasetti without pay. Both men rely on their pay cheques. Ridgeman's wife Melanie (Laurie Holden) is a former cop with multiple sclerosis ad soaring medical bills, while Lurasetti has recently invested in an engagement ring for his girlfriend (Tattiawna Jones). To make ends meet, the cops intend to muscle in on a robbery orchestrated by Lorentz Vogelman (Thomas Kretschmann). Lurasetti is unconvinced by a plan he describes as "bad - like lasagne in a can". Meanwhile, ex-con Henry Johns (Tory Kittles) accepts an offer from best friend Biscuit (Michael Jai White) to work as Vogelman's getaway drivers. It will be easy money that will help Henry to wrest his mother from the jaws of drug addiction and prostitution, as well as secure a brighter future for his teenage brother (Myles Truitt). Dragged Across Concrete face-plants subtlety in every brutish, muscular scene. One character is disembowelled in stomach-churning close-up while another loses their pinkies. Gibson oozes despair from every pore, riffing convincingly with Vaughn while Jennifer Carpenter delivers an eye-catching supporting turn as a bank teller, who is reluctantly returning to work after maternity leave.
