This is excellent. Zahler's back on form after the misstep of Brawl in Cell Block 99. His third-directed film is a patient, reservedly cool, violent thriller about a heist of a heist, with a lot of understated humour. I don't think I remember the film even having a score. It's a unique film, stylistically. It's a two-and-a-half hour crime drama, which may put some people off. But it works. The dialogue is really engrossing. From the figures of speech ("put it away so it doesn't catch a cold", "cast iron") to the recurring idiosyncrasies ("anchovies", "60 percent", etc.). The commentating on modern life is also very pleasing. Mel's "Is this a guy or girl singing this song?". Awesome. Don Johnson's comparison of modern racism to 50s communism. Awesome. And Vaughn's noisy eating. Hilarious. The buddy non-cop vibe between the two leads here is just great. There is such a brutal honesty but mutual respect and admiration between them, and it's great to observe. I am really fond of this film. One of the best films this year so far.

Yeah this was fucking awesome. Easily Zahler's best film to date, and this is coming from someone who actually enjoyed Cell Block and loved Bone Tomahawk. It's a very deliberately paced film, but like Algren said the dialogue is really fucking engrossing. So many great lines from Gibson and Vaughn, although their scene with Don Johnson is probably the most memorable one in the movie IMO. I really wish we got just one more scene with his character, but that's just a little nit pick. It's an extremely well written movie and considering the 2 and a half hour running time I was honestly never bored while watching it. What surprised me most of all though is just how well the humor works without it feeling forced or out of place. There are some downright hilarious scenes in this movie and even though most of it is quite dark it completely works. Loved how gritty and seedy the movie looked at times as well and when it got brutal it definitely didn't shy away from the gore. The fate of a certain character we are just introduced too really caught me off guard and might be one of the most shocking and disturbing deaths I have seen in a while. Also, Tory Kittles is pretty great in this too. I've always enjoyed him as an actor and he really got to shine here. His character quickly became my favorite after like only the first 5 to 10 minutes into the movie.

A

This is an immediate, holy-sh-t, hold-on-for-dear-life masterpiece, and it is a shame it is being largely slept on. It is a vast novel of a film, with so many characters, tensions, and themes building separately before slowly merging and reaching a crescendo, but it never feels cumbersome, overextended, or anything but precisely assembled for maximum impact.

The dialogue is clever and well-constructed, an ornate dance of the anecdotal, the arcane, the procedural, the profane, etc., and the actors, particularly Mel Gibson, find the perfect rhythm and tone with which to deliver it. There is immense pleasure throughout in just listening to and dissecting the words, the way these men say or do not say what they mean using the idiosyncratic vocabularies they have developed after myriad hard years on the street. Comparisons to masters of cigarettes-and-con-artists screen and television writing (Samuel Fuller, Ernest Lehman, Jean-Pierre Melville, and a trio of Davids: Mamet, Milch, and Simon) are apt.

Every scene hums, vibrates, with intrigue and tension, even when there are also heavy doses of deadpan or macabre humor. The protagonists (two detectives under investigation for excessive force, two street-level criminals loyal to each other since childhood, both being drawn into the same heist without understanding its full nature) are simultaneously profoundly flawed and entirely human—trying to be disciplined, becoming tired, driven at once by love and greed, hindered by suspicious or resentful natures—and the film considers them with an intelligent, level-headed empathy. Expertly, it does this while also maintaining an anthropological overview of the tangled, gruesome webs they weave for themselves and others.

Nobody sums up a film quite like you, David. Great review. Nailed what I wanted to say if only I was able (minus the bit about the writers).

That is a great review, even by David's standards. Thank-you.

Cant wait to see this!

This was intense and an excellent film, S. Craig Zahler got me pretty hooked on his style with Brawl in Cell Block 99, but he managed to up his game with this home run. It's cool, gritty, dark and humorous at times, a great ride that doesn't feel like 2.5 hours long at all. The film broods at the beginning, taking it's time to lay the emotional pieces that culminate in crime drama of the best kind. Everyone aces their part, and it's just so good to see Gibson at the top of his craft. The dialogue and cinematography make it riveting. Love it and look forward to Zahler's next film.

A

People who watch movies on a phone are barely above pedophiles in the social class system scale.

QUOTED FOR TRUTH

@stuffp

Dragged Across Concrete is a slow-burn heist movie, but never feels as long as it is. We probably could have cut a few minutes here and there (more on that later) but its not slow by any means. It actually builds up the heist as if the robbers are the ones getting robbed, and its not until a few blacked masked executions later that we realize exactly how big the stakes are, and that while Mel and Vince were planning on getting their retirement funded, there was a whole different movie being set up by the other guys. It cements just how out of touch the main characters are, these two guys just can't seem to fit in anywhere in this modern world. But we're still rooting for them anyways, because like they said "its up to us" to stop these psychopathic black masked murderers.

I had one huge problem with it that dropped it at least one grade and that is Jennifer Carpenter's character. I get that this is a movie about men and how men are having trouble fitting in and being emasculated by a Woke world that no longer appreciates them. That's all well and fine considering what actually happens in the film. What I don't understand is why we had to spend ten minutes establishing how much Jennifer Carpenter loves her baby and doesn't want to go back to work on this day because she loves her baby so much and her unmanly stay-at-home husband is pushing her to go to work even though she doesn't want because she loves her baby so much. Being the first woman to get any sort of story since the Mom in the prologue, I figured she must have a big part to play in this story. But nope, five minutes later, in less time than it took to introduce her character, her head is being exploded … OK then? Well I guess you had no use for a bank character and she was kinda like the driver in heat or something? Only wait, now the Black Masks have a hostage, a female hostage at that, one whose family they threaten later in the movie to get her to perform an extreme action. Soooooo why not use the character you already set up, one who we know loves her family so much that she would shoot Vince Vaughn to protect them? Or if you're not gonna use Jennifer anymore, why not cut all the backstory? It was so frustrating and I couldn't get over it even as I was watching the intense final shootout. Such an unneeded error and for what? Just for the surprise factor of killing the only recognizable woman in your cast? Bleh.

It’s kinda funny that this movie, which only came out like a year ago, looked at civilians filming police brutality and considered That to be one of the problems with our society. Poor Mel!

How a year can change things.

The movie is an edge-of-your-seat-thriller even when most of the movie is about two dudes talking. The dialogues are amazing which also helps the movie. Jennifer Carpenter's character was wasted and there was an imbalance between the two groups in terms of build-up. I also didn't like how/why Gibson's character had to die in the end. For almost 2 hours and 30 minutes its a great watch.

B+