What's going on guys? I'm Tyler and I'm very late to the party on this 'cause this
came out in 2019 but since I actually missed a shit ton of 2019 movies
anyways, I'm here to let you know that "Dragged Across Concrete" is NoPerfectMovie!
And it follows two cops (Mel Gibson & Vince Vaughn) who are
suspended from the police force for being caught on camera being
unnecessarily rough, and since they're both in desperate need of money they
decide to stake out & potentially rob a crime boss that's recently moved to
their city, but things get complicated once they realize why this boss is here
and worst of all; just how brutal his crew mates are! And I was waiting for
this movie to come out in theatres without even having seen a trailer
because I saw a promo on YouTube that had a picture of Mel Gibson and Vince
Vaughn and I'm like 'Didn't they work together on "Hacksaw Ridge" together'? and I'm like
"They're making a crime movie with the dude who directed "Bone Tomahawk"?
"Sign me up for that, I'm all for it"! And then it never came to theatres-
at least none of the theatres by my city. It came out in theatres & VOD on the same
day which isn't always a good sign and I didn't actually know that until I saw a
blu-ray at Walmart while waiting for another movie to start and I'm like
"Maybe I'll check that out on VOD when I get home", I did and for hours after
watching the movie I just kept thinking & kept thinking and I'm like "Screw it!
I'm gonna go back to Walmart and I'm gonna go get that blu-ray"! And I'm glad
I did because as really damn slow as this movie can be, it for whatever reason-
well not for whatever reason, it just fascinates me! For starters, all the
actors do a really good job at portraying so much emotion with very little.
All these characters who are either criminals or cops, they react to
all these horrific violent scenarios in a surprisingly nonchalant way and it
actually does say a lot about them in terms of the nature of their careers.
Mel Gibson especially is probably the most stone-faced because he has the most
experience seeing all this dark shit and weirdly enough his soft line delivery
actually makes it seem even harsher when he expresses the fact that the world is
not as great of a place as we want it to be and how much it frustrates him
whenever people bring politics into his work and supposedly discipline him for
not doing his job in a polite way. You obviously don't agree with him slamming
a guy's face into concrete of course but if he sees a suspect and that suspect
might be armed, you can at least understand why he's not gonna take any chances.
Vince Vaughn as his partner is also a
little bit jaded from the things that he's seen as a cop & a military sniper
but because he's younger and less experienced, he has seemingly much more
optimism and more faith in his job as a police officer and the tension between
the two of them as partners really comes down to questions like "Why don't
they just send an anonymous tip to the cops? Why don't they apprehend this boss
themselves"? They could be redeemed by the media, by the police force, feel gratified
by themselves personally or whether or not robbing these gangsters not only
disciplines them in a way by robbing their money and having no recourse but
also giving these officers what they consider to be proper compensation for
their poor wages. There are no easy answers in this movie and that's one of
the things that makes it so uncompromising but respectfully
uncompromising! For starters, the violence in this movie is entertaining, intense
and really well handled in a realistic way! S. Craig Zahler films all these
scenarios in really steady wide-shots. He has this kind of Ryan Coogler thing
where the situations are gritty but the camerawork (the choppy editing, or shaky cam)
that's not what makes it gritty, the scenarios themselves are gritty but the
steady photography for sure makes it seem so
fluid & artistic and whenever something especially violent happens,
Zahler makes the wise choice to never let it linger. As soon as someone is shot
in the face-blood is splattered all over the place, it immediately cuts away
to the shooter or to a bystander who saw it to make it seem sudden & shocking
but never never lingers on the violence itself to the point where the blood and
guts be exploitative! But easily the most
uncompromising thing about this movie for sure is just how offside
everyone's beliefs in this movie are! The movie never picks a side with their
characters politically; there are conservative characters like Mel Gibson
who refuse to adapt with the times and feel like they're being unnecessarily
judged for it, there are liberal characters who have semi-conservative
beliefs and it really pisses them off and makes them feel a little
self-loathing like Mel Gibson's wife; she claims she's as liberal as any ex-cop
can be and she knows that it's racist to think that black people are criminals
but she can't help herself from feeling that way because black kids in her
neighborhood are assaulting her daughter on a semi-regular basis! None of the
characters in this movie are inherently evil but because life has dealt them a
really shitty hand, their way of dealing if with it is by lashing out towards
others like there's one criminal in this movie whose dad ran off on his family
for another man and that's exactly why he's homophobic! As opposed to most
movies about hatred that focus on why it's good to be accepting and loving to
others which-is obviously a really good message, by focusing solely on that,
the movies get really repetitive and if you're already on the movie's side
with that, you're not gonna learn anything new and you're just gonna say "Seen it before!
Seen it done better'! and if you're an asshole who hates the message of the
movie already, you're either not gonna pay attention to it or you're going to
blindly go see it and say "This sucks! I hate it"! so in the long run... not really
accomplishing that much! This movie asks the really tough question of 'If we are
too afraid to try to learn or understand where the hatred comes from, how are we
going to evolve as a society? How are we going to change ourselves'? As for
side characters, there aren't that many that are in more than 1-2 scenes like
Don Johnson and Jennifer Carpenter, I don't know why their names
are the most thrown-out in the trailers 'cause Johnson's literally in that one scene
and Carpenter is the type of side character who's usually in the
background until something really intense happens and in order for the
villains to show themselves off, they pick the one background character who
becomes really essential but Zahler's writing really makes it seem like every
character never really goes to waste! Johnson in the one scene as Gibson and
Vaughn's superior basically privately tells them; being called a racist
nowadays is like being called a communist in the 50s and that's the
quote that really stuck with me throughout the film and even if you
disagree with that, you can spend some time thinking about it and you can at
least understand why anyone would say that! And Carpenter's character is given
a backstory that makes the background character all of a sudden becoming the
forefront, it makes it seem like you're watching one of those news reports where
there's an incident and there's a victim that you hear factoids about and you
hear things about them from friends or family members but you never see their
perspective, this movie gives that perspective so whenever something
violent happens to Carpenter's character, it really elevates the stakes!
now as thought-provoking as the movie is, as well acted, well directed and sharply
written as it is, the runtime of 2 hours, 38 minutes really is unnecessary and
it really comes down to how much dialogue there is in this movie.
Zahler's idea of making sure no character goes to waste is by having these these minute-long
monologues of side characters to give off some interesting & semi funny
facts and for the sake of world-building because this takes place in an
imaginary city where crime is ridden all over the place, gangsters have these
different codes of conduct, different ways of operating without getting caught
and those things were really interesting but I felt like there were some
potential scenes where you could have just told
those scenes purely visual like when Gibson goes to me to contact-as opposed to
arguing for a couple of minutes whether or not that contact
is there, he can walk up to the person, they can look at each other and just
through close-ups, just through the actors facial expressions, without talking you
could understand what's about to happen and it would save a hell of a lot of time.
You could make the argument that Zahler was a novelist before being a
filmmaker and that may come from it which I understand, but he does have
scenes in this movie that are purely visual like when Gibson's daughter does
get assaulted and how she deals with. That scene was done with maybe one
or two lines of talking and it was one of the best scenes in the movie!
Hell, the funniest scene in the movie is just Gibson & Vaughn in a car not talking
while Vaughn is munching very loudly on a sandwich and Gibson's just looking the
other way going "Come on"! That bit was funny and because just the visuals were
funny, once Gibson started talking that just
elevated the scene and elevated the humour! There's also some directing
techniques that were obviously intentional but didn't always work as
well as I think Zahler was hoping. They would for starters as opposed to cutting
back and forth between actors through close-ups, he has Gibson & Vaughn react
to certain violent things in wide shots where you can both see their reactions
and their expressions to the given moment and sometimes it works but
because these characters are so nonchalant about their jobs and about
how horrible the world is and because most of these shots linger on for longer
periods of time, the reactions don't really have that
lasting of an effect as I think they were hoping it would and Zahler has this
one technique that usually I'm a big fan of; is when the music in the movie never
comes from a soundtrack-it's never purely existing to us as the audience,
the music comes within the scene from like a car radio or from someone busking
on the street. Sometimes it works in this movie and it leads to some jazz & R&B
that fits the film noir style that he's going for but again, when it's just
Gibson & Vaughn in a car (which is the majority of the movie if I'm being
completely honest) all the empty space just makes you
acknowledge the fact that there really isn't that much going on. It's not like
'No Country for Old Men" or "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" where there are a lot of
emotions happening at once during each scene, this movie's a lot more meditative-
a lot more thoughtful and sometimes it does weigh the movie down.
but in the long run, "Dragged Across Concrete" is as brutal as the title would
say and it's as painfully long as the title itself but I gotta give it to
S. Craig Zahler as a filmmaker, Mel Gibson Vince Vaughn do some of their best
performances, Don Johnson & Jennifer Carpenter make the most of the little
time they're given and I didn't talk about him that much in this video
because Tory Kittles is really the standout in this movie and if I said
anything else about him, it would go into spoiler territory because he's probably
the most mysterious character in the movie! Aside from being sidetracked,
the direction, the writing, the performances, the cinematography, just how well the
violence is handled in a realistic but still entertaining level, I'm glad I own
"Dragged Across Concrete" and I'm gonna give it a 3.5/5
Guys, thanks as always for watching! If you have seen "Dragged Across Concrete",
let me know in the comments below what you thought of it! Be sure to stay tuned
for more reviews and be sure to LIKE and subscribe! Take care!