Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2019)

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Lost Highway
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Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2019)

#1 Post by Lost Highway » Mon Apr 01, 2019 8:45 am

I’m still grappling with just how much I loved Dragged Across Concrete, considering its been accused of right-wing trolling. Unlike many a film which does everything “right” in terms of identity politics and representation, I haven’t stopped thinking about this since I saw it a few days ago. On a gut level, I haven’t enjoyed a film this much in a while. It’s long, it’s slow and for the first half I wasn’t sure. Then at midpoint there is a long, seemingly out of place sequence which introduces Jennifer Carpenter’s character and with that the whole film fell into place for me. To say more would spoil too much, but there is a sense of compassion there, which struck a cord with me. Other’s may feel differently about the scene and how the film treats its female characters. The film’s sensibility is unapologetic pulp, its execution is masterful.

I have enjoyed all of Zahler’s films so far. He’s always been a excellent screen writer but with this film his directing skills have caught up with his ability to write.
Last edited by Lost Highway on Tue Apr 02, 2019 12:26 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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dda1996a
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Re: The Films of 2019

#2 Post by dda1996a » Mon Apr 01, 2019 9:47 am

Cell Block 99 was accused of racism which I found mostly wrong headed, but his casting of Gibson here muddies the water. I've been meaning to watch this for a while though, glad to hear you liked it.

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Fiery Angel
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Re: The Films of 2019

#3 Post by Fiery Angel » Mon Apr 01, 2019 10:44 am

Armond White loved it, FWIW.

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dda1996a
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Re: The Films of 2019

#4 Post by dda1996a » Mon Apr 01, 2019 11:04 am

Fiery Angel wrote:
Mon Apr 01, 2019 10:44 am
Armond White loved it, FWIW.
But of course he did. He's bound to get some right here and there

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Lost Highway
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Re: The Films of 2019

#5 Post by Lost Highway » Mon Apr 01, 2019 11:29 am

Fiery Angel wrote:
Mon Apr 01, 2019 10:44 am
Armond White loved it, FWIW.
Armond White was bound to get on the movie’s side at the first accusation of Zahler’s supposed right wing trolling.
dda1996a wrote:
Mon Apr 01, 2019 9:47 am
Cell Block 99 was accused of racism which I found mostly wrong headed, but his casting of Gibson here muddies the water. I've been meaning to watch this for a while though, glad to hear you liked it.
There definitely is purpose Gibson’s casting as a racist, abusive cop. It’s arguable whether the film ever endorses his views and while I’m no fan of the man’s politics, he’s excellent in the role. Not that this makes everything ok, but Gibson and Vaughn are counterbalanced by two black characters of equal importance, who are just as well drawn.

As movies about racist cops go, I found Dragged Across Concrete considerably less contentious and more honest than Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

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dda1996a
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Re: Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2019)

#6 Post by dda1996a » Mon Apr 01, 2019 12:44 pm

Considering I hated Three Bilboards this is good, but honestly Zahler is one of the few new American directors who actually interests me and uses slowness in a productive way

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whaleallright
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Re: Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2019)

#7 Post by whaleallright » Mon Apr 01, 2019 8:47 pm

I liked this film a lot, but there's no question that although the film is hardly a hearty endorsement of police brutality, it definitely stacks the deck to make the two central cop characters what the kids these days call "relatable"—giving Gibson, for instance, money problems that seemed to me a little unlikely (I don't know about this film's fictional city, but the police detectives in the places I've lived are well-compensated, with iron job security and union-ensured benefits packages; none of them are likely to be stuck in a declining neighborhood).

That said, the film seems carefully designed to confound efforts to ascribe to it an obvious ideological position, not that folks, whether that's bloggers seeking all the clicks that outrage will buy, or the typically dull-minded and opportunistic latter-day Armond White, won't give it a try.

What unsettled me in this film—and I can't decide if it's for good or ill or both or neither—is the way the subplot (or simply a Tarantino-esque digression) with Jennifer Carpenter plays out. I think it could be "read" as supremely humanistic, a reminder of the collateral damage so many heist films leave to the margins. Or its carefully-developed pathos could be seen as just the setup to an unusually cruel punchline— like the filmmaker was demonstrating his supreme ability to manipulate the audience and little more. (In other words, the approach Michael Haneke so often takes.)

My gut tells me that, whatever explanations Zahler might provide in interviews, that there's a fundamentally Sadean streak in his films. Which in the context of a very sanitized contemporary American cinema is almost refreshing, as weird as it might seem to apply that word to a film in which villains dispassionately search through a dead man's viscera in search of an object.

I agree about the film's slowness. Whatever this film was, it was never boring despite its nearly 3-hour running time.

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Finch
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Re: Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2019)

#8 Post by Finch » Mon Apr 01, 2019 8:53 pm

I quite enjoyed Vern's take on the film though I ultimately liked it less outside of the questionable politics. I found it far too long, indulgently so, and could have done without the Jennifer Carpenter subplot. I think the film overall would have benefited if Zahler had spent the time more productively on Tony Kittles. And, man, that bit with Laurie Holden going (paraphrasing here) "I'm not racist but I think these blacks who poured soda all over my girl could rape her sooner than later"! If you used to be really liberal, how exactly does an admittedly unpleasant incident suddenly make you think these blacks aren't just anti-social but also rapists?

Also, Mr Zahler, don't be so disingenous: you're clearly putting political ideas and sentiments (see Don Johnson's rant) into your film so don't act like you are not talking politics through your characters. I'd be more impressed if you said upfront, these are my politics and you don't have to agree with them.

A filmmaker's politics don't have to align with mine for me to enjoy their films but if you pull this nonsense, you make me a lot less inclined to want to listen to you in the first place. Bummed to say this is the first Zahler film I outright didn't like.
Last edited by Finch on Mon Apr 01, 2019 9:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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whaleallright
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Re: Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2019)

#9 Post by whaleallright » Mon Apr 01, 2019 9:05 pm

Zahler does admit in some interviews to having what he calls some "conservative" views (which I think we would be mostly correct in reading as "reactionary" and probably "racist"), so while sometimes he pulls out the old "I'm not a political fimmaker" lie that nearly every American director adopts at one point or another (God bless Spike Lee for never bothering with this coy b.s.), other times he does own up to a kind of agenda.

I think there's probably some observational truth to the character of Gibson's wife. How many Trump supporters, for example, will claim to be or have been (and maybe even believe themselves to have been) "totally a liberal person" while spouting vile, racist stereotypes? I know a few.

I think the politics of the film come through less from the more obvious and even didactic "statements" Zahler places in the mouths of his characters (which again, can be defended as plausibly sociologically accurate) but more in the way he stacks the deck to increase our sympathy for the two cops.

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Lost Highway
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Re: Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2019)

#10 Post by Lost Highway » Tue Apr 02, 2019 6:02 am

Zahler also stacks the decks heavily (disabled kid brother, etc) for us to have sympathies for Tory Kittles’ and Michael Jai White’s characters and I was rooting more for them.
SpoilerShow
Kittles is the only one of the four leads left standing at the end and I think that’s supposed to be the right outcome.


If not then the film would indeed have been unacceptable. The villains
SpoilerShow
aren’t black either, they are Eurotrash baddies of the Die Hard variety.

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Big Ben
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Re: Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2019)

#11 Post by Big Ben » Tue Apr 02, 2019 10:02 am

This is a weird film. It's not woke by any means but it isn't slathered in bile like others have insinuated. Make no mistake the film is about bad people but they're not entirely monsters. The film reminds me a lot of grindhouse films from the seventies and eighties but with a much higher budget. With the exception of one character no one in the film is exactly someone I would consider tolerable and that's okay. As for motivation I can certainly attest to the cops in my hometown being paid like garbage and well, with the stress that comes with the job it's hardly enough to cover the emotional damage done (I know a cop who shot someone and in an an entirely "The other guy was about to murder a woman kind of way" and it destroyed him and his wife emotionally.) so I have little problem believing Gibson's character would want to do something like this.

The film is not entirely without a semblance of a moral compass as Lost Highway has pointed out:
SpoilerShow
Neither Gibson or Vaughn's characters survive the film and only Gibson's character's family gets something in return for his efforts. Both characters pay with their lives so that a black family can thrive. Hardly what I would call a progressive ending but it's one of the few I would have taken as morally acceptable. Vaughn's character also makes a point to talk about how shitty Gibson is for not stopping the robbery, which is something Zahler could have easily left out if he had wanted to. These characters are awful people, but they're not without emotions.
It's a vile film but I'm getting the idea that that's the point? I've not seen or read anything Zahler has done before. Are all the things he made like this? I wish to stress I'm not condemning the film but I'm rather taken aback but it's upfront nature. You don't see many films made like this anymore. I'm not sure that's entirely a ringing endorsement but rather how I honestly feel, surprised.

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Re: Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2019)

#12 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Apr 02, 2019 11:31 am

Finch wrote:
Mon Apr 01, 2019 8:53 pm
I found it far too long, indulgently so, and could have done without the Jennifer Carpenter subplot.
This is the sequence I enjoyed most in a film that I all-around enjoyed - it felt like the sort of diversion that Twin Peaks Season 3 would take, where we'd be introduced to a new character having no idea why we were spending time with them or where they were going to fit into the plot. Perhaps I'm naive, but it wasn't until that scene started to play out once she got to work that it dawned on me what we were inevitably going to see. It's a real achievement to have an almost Chigurh-level of heartless villain in a film, let alone a group of them, and man does Zahler lay it on thick how much, regardless of who ends up managing to do it, the viewer should want to see these guys get taken out. It works within a "there's no heroes in this story" grey area beautifully. Feels like a pure slice of Don Siegel/Sam Peckinpah grime, and films like this just don't get made (well) anymore.

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Big Ben
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Re: Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2019)

#13 Post by Big Ben » Tue Apr 02, 2019 12:02 pm

I wasn't bothered by the running time which is something I was certain was going to be a problem. In fact I'd go as far as to say the two and a half hours breezed by. Different stokes I guess! On the matter of what it reminded me of Don Siegel was the name I was thinking of while watching this film although Vaughn and Gibson's characters lack Harry Callahan's charisma (I would Harry gets off quite a bit easier too.) And I don't agree about the Carpenter subplot needing to be removed because:
SpoilerShow
It reinforces Vaughn's character's eventual criticism of Gibson's actions. They might be shitbags, but the innocent people who were murdered in the bank most certainly were not and as cops they should have done more to help them. And in the end both men pay for their actions. Carpenter's subplot means the sequence has more power to it, albeit one that's certainly laid on.
Tonally though at the end the film reminded me a lot of Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia which is also pretty grim.

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Lost Highway
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Re: Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2019)

#14 Post by Lost Highway » Tue Apr 02, 2019 12:16 pm

Big Ben wrote:
Tue Apr 02, 2019 10:02 am
I've not seen or read anything Zahler has done before. Are all the things he made like this? I wish to stress I'm not condemning the film but I'm rather taken aback but it's upfront nature. You don't see many films made like this anymore. I'm not sure that's entirely a ringing endorsement but rather how I honestly feel, surprised.
Zahler’s first two films have been accused of racism, perhaps unfairly so. In Bone Tomahawk, which is a western/horror hybrid, the monsters are explained to be cave dwelling, pre-modern-human troglodytes but some accused the film of portraying Native Americans as savages. With Brawl in Cell Block 99 the characters use homophobic and racial slurs, but at no point did I feel that the film endorsed the way prison inmates talk. So with this I wonder if Zahler tackles the issue of racism head on in what could well be a “fuck you” to his critics. A bit like when De Palma packed everything critics objected to in terms of violence and sexism, into Body Double.

I consider myself reasonably woke but I also love vintage exploitation films. Zahler hits that sweet spot like no other modern film-maker for me and I think he is aware of where the line is drawn.
Last edited by Lost Highway on Tue Apr 02, 2019 12:26 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2019)

#15 Post by domino harvey » Tue Apr 02, 2019 12:20 pm

I’ve only seen Bone Tomahawk and while I found it poorly paced and way too in love with its not all that clever dialog (it came across as a modern Nunnally Johnson pic more than anything), I don’t think it’s any more or less racist than any other western with regards to its depiction of an unfriendly tribe— it just does so with such horror movie explicitness that it seems more jarring than it is, comparatively

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2019)

#16 Post by Mr Sausage » Tue Apr 02, 2019 1:31 pm

It has a native american character explicitly distance the tribe from actual native americans, giving the troglodyte description with a visible disgust. So it’s at least conscious of the problem and trying to mitigate it.

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Re: Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2019)

#17 Post by Persona » Tue Apr 02, 2019 2:40 pm

Going to be really fascinating to see what Park Chan-wook does with a Zahler script as that is his next project.

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Re: Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2019)

#18 Post by mfunk9786 » Tue Apr 02, 2019 2:50 pm

The line on what is considered "racist" has moved and will continue to, but I found the portrayal of characters like Don Johnson's to be indicative of Zahler signaling to his viewers that he doesn't agree with the opinions or actions of Gibson or Vaughn, even if he considers them to be more of a force for good than the film's villains. Luckily, this is only a movie, and it's lacking a fundamental philosophical racism that I would've had much less patience for - the film is not in any way (that I can see) endorsing the prejudices of some of its characters, but it's not hiding from them, either. There are other recent pictures (like Three Billboards) that have more of an undercurrent of racism than this one, and in my opinion, that film is coming from a more nasty place than Zahler is here.

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Re: Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2019)

#19 Post by Black Hat » Tue Apr 02, 2019 5:19 pm

I like this movie a lot more than I should, which is to say it's a highly intelligent, very well executed kind of awful. The film's preposterous third act makes this even more of an accomplishment.

As for its politics it's not Red Dawn John Milius as it's way too subtle for that, but the gentle manipulation dripping throughout the picture leaves us in a place that feels tacked on to pander to a certain kind of "I'm actually not what you think I am" psychosis.

Ridgeman and his family are stand ins for what's left behind or the 'good old days' as the world's passed him by with neither him, nor his family going to be who they wanted to be or rather who they think they deserve to be, are supposed to be. Naturally, none of this is Ridgeman's fault and so he embarks on a mission to flip the deck stacked against him, to take back justice from a world unjust to him.

Mel Gibson is excellent and also gross, but you do find yourself rooting for him. The film wants you to think this is because of all that has befallen his life, he's a victim of circumstance. His motivations are also quite clear, if not noble, even if it comes to light under insidiousness.

How it really does it tho is by making Ridgeman's adversaries far more brutal than him. Nor do we learn their motivations, we barely get a look at a face.

Tony Kittles did win in the end, but was that ever the point? Or was it more ending by macguffin? A proverbial 'monkey' off the back?

To call the film 'racist' is too easy.

It's way too smart for that.

To say a movie where we follow around, kinda rooting for two racist cops for close to three hours was able to get made in 2019 says it all.

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Re: Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2019)

#20 Post by dda1996a » Wed Apr 03, 2019 1:37 am

domino harvey wrote:
Tue Apr 02, 2019 12:20 pm
I’ve only seen Bone Tomahawk and while I found it poorly paced and way too in love with its not all that clever dialog (it came across as a modern Nunnally Johnson pic more than anything), I don’t think it’s any more or less racist than any other western with regards to its depiction of an unfriendly tribe— it just does so with such horror movie explicitness that it seems more jarring than it is, comparatively
Cell Block 99 is terrific and this is solid.
Just like Cell Block, I feel some racist remarks are made to push other characters into action, not because of a prejudiced ideology. And once again the main motivation behind all the characters (like Cell Block, can't remember much about Bone Tomahawk) is the American Dream, the false promises of the economy. I think it's telling we start and end the film not with Gibson and Vaughn, but with Kittles.
The only thing holding this back is pacing. I found the slowness of Cell Block mesmerizing, but here it takes too long for the main action of the film to start. I enjoyed Zahler's digressions and his slow methodical build up, but this film lacked the one way, predetermined brutality of it's predecessor

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Re: Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2019)

#21 Post by tarpilot » Wed Apr 03, 2019 2:42 pm

whaleallright wrote:
Mon Apr 01, 2019 8:47 pm
That said, the film seems carefully designed to confound efforts to ascribe to it an obvious ideological position, not that folks, whether that's bloggers seeking all the clicks that outrage will buy, or the typically dull-minded and opportunistic latter-day Armond White, won't give it a try.
I've only seen Brawl in Cell Block 99, but something like this struck me there, too. It's almost audaciously shrewd. It should be pointed out that the aforementioned racial and homophobic slurs are limited to a couple of early instances from Marc Blucas's character, the only ally of Vaughn's outside of his wife, and Vaughn immediately calls him out on both counts as only a Chill Woke Badass could ("I didn't know H20 had a sexual orientation" and "I don't think a man like you could say that [n-] word in any way polite"). It's transparently designed to offset discomfort at siding with Vaughn's character on the ensuing blood-soaked odyssey, but I can't really begrudge Zahler stacking soundbites in anticipation of highly visible attacks from those who are unwilling to engage on any other level.

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Re: Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2019)

#22 Post by Slaphappy » Tue Apr 16, 2019 5:51 am

I’m somewhat looking forward for this as a Mel Gibson vehicle, but I’m not that impressed by Zahler so far. Like his retro genre colleague Panos Cosmatos, Zahler has knack for interesting consepts and ambition to attempt something extraordinary with them, but he’d really need at least a strong screenwriter to work with. Zahler, a novellist by his original trade, is is too much in love with his vision and lacks overall talent or experience to be a good auteur. I did not see any improvement from Bone Tomahawk to Brawl in Cellblock 99. Both have sloppy pacing, way too much mediocre dialogue and lackluster sadism that’s not even halfway from Troma to Cannibal Holocaust.

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Re: Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2019)

#23 Post by domino harvey » Tue Apr 30, 2019 10:56 am

Image

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dda1996a
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Re: Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2019)

#24 Post by dda1996a » Tue Apr 30, 2019 12:08 pm

Honestly I'm tempted to get that middle one. These are pretty great in the worst possible way (the left is quality good though)

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Re: Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2019)

#25 Post by wattsup32 » Wed Mar 17, 2021 4:01 pm

DarkImbecile gifted me a digital code for this and I am happy he did. There is so much space and quiet in this film. I would have expected this much space and quiet to run its course in such a long film, but its meditations and comedic undercurrent was so engaging that the runtime flew by. Despite the pacing, it's all wheat and no chaff. Even the controversial sequence introducing the female "lead" provided depth and development that lent weight to the audience's feelings for the 3.5 main leads.

I guess I'm not woke enough to understand the issues viewers have had with the politics here unless we mean to say its not possible for a person to still be a worthy human being and have repulsive views on race. Or, maybe I'm the only person with grandparents.

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