Movie Review: Dragged Across Concrete

Dragged Across Concrete **** / *****

Directed by: S. Craig Zahler.

Written by: S. Craig Zahler.

Starring: Mel Gibson (Brett Ridgeman), Vince Vaughn (Anthony Lurasetti), Tory Kittles (Henry Johns), Michael Jai White (Biscuit), Thomas Kretschmann (Lorentz Vogelmann), Jennifer Carpenter (Kelly Summer), Laurie Holden (Melanie Ridgeman), Don Johnson (Chief Lt. Calvert), Udo Kier (Friedrich), Fred Melamed (Mr. Edmington), Justine Warrington (Cheryl), Matthew MacCaull (Grey Gloves), Primo Allon (Black Gloves), Jordyn Ashley Olson (Sara Ridgeman), Myles Truitt (Ethan Jones), Tattiawna Jones (Denise), Richard Newman (Feinbaum), Vivian Ng (Lana), Andrew Dunbar (Jeffrey), Noel (Vasquez).

 

There’s a scene early in S. Craig Zahler’s Dragged Across Concrete in which the director seems to be daring his critics to get offended. In it, two white copes – played by Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn – are questioning a young Latino woman who wears hearing aids – and although her English is perfectly clear to those of us in the audience – you don’t even have to strain to make out the words – the two cops act as if they cannot understand a word she is saying. It is an admittedly juvenile provocation by Zahler – a way to clap back at his critics, who he knows are out there, and he knows he’s going to offend, and he doesn’t much care. You would think just casting Mel Gibson in the lead role would be enough of a sign that Zahler doesn’t care about offending people – but just in case you someone wandered in and didn’t know, Zahler makes sure you know right off the bat. And yet, that scene isn’t really indicative of the rest of the movie. The films racial politics – and gender politics for that matter – are more complicated than you would think a movie with that opening scene would be. Zahler has created a world here in which the cops are racist – at least a little – but they are also family men. They will cross the line into becoming criminals – yet they aren’t the worst criminals in the film. The two major black characters in the movie are criminals as well – but again, they aren’t the worst of the worst. They seemed trapped between the cops who are out to bust them, and the real criminals who exploit them. It’s a film that basically stops for 15 minutes at its mid-point, to tell the story of a bank employee on her first day going back to work after giving birth, just so that when a robbery happens at her bank at the end of that sequence, you care about her in a way you don’t about bank employees in robbery scenes. Dragged Across Concrete is a complicated moral landscape, where no one is innocent.

 

Like Zahler’s other two films – the violent horror/Western Bone Tomahawk and the crime drama Brawl in Cell Block 99, Dragged Across Concrete is far longer than you would expect a genre film like this to be. It isn’t quite as extended as Brawl in Cell Block 99 was – which I liked to describe as a movie called Brawl in Cell Block 99 which takes two hours to even get to Cell Block 99 and another 20 minutes before the brawl breaks out. When it gets there though, watch out. Both of them films have already developed a cult following – and Dragged Across Concrete will as well. This film can be neatly divided in two – with everything leading up to that robbery at the midpoint happening over a few days, and then everything after that robbery happening over one long night. The film will get violent – very violent – although not as much as his other two.

 

Gibson and Vaughn star as two detective – Ridgeman and Lurasetti. Ridgeman is old – he’s approaching 60 – and he hasn’t been promoted in decades – he says because he refuses to play the political games, which is assholes says to excuse their asshole behavior. Ridgeman is tired – he has a sick wife, and a teenage daughter who gets harassed daily, all because he cannot afford to live in a better neighborhood. Lurasetti seems cheerier than his older partner – if no less of an asshole. He speaks like no cop (or really, no person) has ever spoken – with the weird cadence of Zahler’s dialogue. Vaughn probably says more in the opening scene here than he did throughout all of Brawl in Cell Block 99 (which is the best performance of his career). The two cops get suspended for being too rough on a suspect – which of course, was captured on a cellphone. With more time on his hands, Ridgeman becomes determined to rip off a criminal – why should they have money, when he doesn’t. Which will lead, inevitably, to that bank robbery. The other storyline, that gets much less time, follows Henry (Tory Kittles), a young black man just out of prison, who wants to find the money to support his mom, and his little brother – confined to a wheelchair because of a stray bullet. He too, will of course, end up at that robbery.

 

There has been a lot of talk in recent years about the difference between depiction and endorsement – and its often in the oddest movies (like The Wolf of Wall Street, which clearly thought its main characters were trash, even as it had fun with them). Here, Zahler seems to be deliberately walking the line between the two of them. He doesn’t try and hide the fact that his cops are racist – at least a little – or sexist. They express their disappointment in the modern PC world, and complain it gets in their way. Does Zahler agree – or is it just his characters bullshitting? Casting Gibson is a deliberate provocation in and of itself – but Zahler gives him the best role he’s had in years, and Gibson delivers one of his best all time performances. It would have been smart casting even if Gibson had not exposed himself to be racist in past incidents, as this is the inevitable end of the road for so many of his characters from prior films – burnt out and bitter, his shtick that was once so charming no turned sad and pathetic. This may just be the saddest Gibson has ever been in a film.

 

Yes, the film seems to deliberately want to provoke a reaction from you – whether it needles you with some dialogue that could reasonably be called racist, sometimes in serious scenes, sometimes in jokey ones (like Vaughn saying he cannot be racist because he orders dark roast on Martin Luther King Day). But then it gives Vaughn a black girlfriend, who he clearly loves, and who clearly loves him. Does that mean he cannot be racist? Of course not. But I do think some of it implies that what we see isn’t all we get.

 

More than anything, Dragged Across Concrete is a character piece. You will have to decide what to make of its characters, and whether it means anything larger. In a way, the film reminded me a little bit of Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (which is perhaps just because I’ve been thinking of that film a lot since Under the Silver Lake). That film basically took Philip Marlowe, a man with a moral code, with plopped him in a word where no one had one of those anymore. That’s kind of what Dragged Across Concrete does – pulls a bunch of characters that would have looked completely normal in a cop movie from a couple of decades ago, and plopped them into a world with PC culture and cell phones. The results aren’t pretty.

Movie Review: Brawl in Cell Block 99

Brawl in Cell Block 99 **** / *****

Directed by: S. Craig Zahler.

Written by: S. Craig Zahler.

Starring: Vince Vaughn (Bradley Thomas), Jennifer Carpenter (Lauren Thomas), Don Johnson (Warden Tuggs), Udo Kier (Placid Man), Marc Blucas (Gil), Tom Guiry (Wilson), Dan Amboyer (Longman), Fred Melamed (Mr. Irving), Rob Morgan (Jeremy).

 

I am as guilty as anyone of sometimes saying – especially of genre films – that the films would be better if they were tighter – mainly meaning, they’d be better if they were shorter. For the most part, I still think I’m right – and that’s mainly because the list of genre films that can sustain its momentum for more than about 100 minutes is short. Most of these film would benefit from being a tight, nasty 90 minutes. Films like Brawl in Cell Block 99 is the exception that proves the rule. Here is a film than runs two hours and twelve minutes – and it takes an hour before the main character is even in jail and another 45 minutes or so before he arrives in Cell Block 99 – he first has to get transferred to a different jail, and then get himself transferred into the title cell block. Oh, there is a brawl in Cell Block 99 alright – and it’s bloody and brutal when it comes. But the film takes its time getting there – and I pretty much loved every minute it takes to do so.

 

The film casts Vince Vaughn as Bradley Thomas – a large, hulking man who is mostly quiet throughout the film, which suits the usually motor mouthed Vaughn quite well. He’s a large man, with a shaved head, with a cross tattooed on the back of it. In the film’s opening scene, he gets fired from his tow truck driving job, and then heads home to have his wife, Lauren (Jennifer Carpenter) tell him she’s having an affair. He doesn’t take the news well – and yet, surprisingly, after his initial meltdown, the couple actually manage a mature (kind of) dialogue about their relationship – and decide to try and make a go of it. Bradley goes to an old acquaintance of his and gets a job “transporting packages” – although we all know what that means. Soon, he’s working with the cartels, and things go from bad to worse as he gets arrested, etc.

 

Brawl in Cell Block 99 is a throwback to the films of the 1970s – the tough guy movies that were written and directed by the likes of Don Siegel or John Milius. It’s easy to dismiss those films as “problematic” – as it would be to do the same thing to this film – it’s perhaps not surprising that as violent as this film is, it is also far more right wing in its outlook than most films. The film wouldn’t really look out of place on a double bill like Dirty Harry – as both films have violent men at their core that you like at as heroic, until you actually stop and think about their actions for more than a minute. I don’t know that Bradley is racist – he beats up members of pretty much every race imaginable, but he has a primitive view of his relationship with his wife to be sure. If you were to argue that the film is about a violent, racist, misogynistic psychopath, I’m not sure I could disagree with you.

 

Yet the film really does give you the same giddy, transgressive thrill of those movies. It was written and directed S. Craig Zahler, who made the horror/Western Bone Tomahawk a couple years back, and learned some lessons from it. Both films are slow burns, gradually leading up to scenes that are absolutely shocking in their level of brutality and bloodshed. He does a far better job this time around though in keeping things interesting leading up to that shocking climax.

 

There will be those who think Brawl in Cell Block 99 is a masterpiece – that will think this is the best film they’ve seen this year, and watch it approximately a million times. There will be those who are offended by the movie, and shut it off fairly early in the film, and never look back. If you’ve made it this far into the review, I suspect you know which one you are.

Movie Review: Bone Tomahawk

Bone Tomahawk
Directed by: S. Craig Zahler.
Written by: S. Craig Zahler.
Starring: Kurt Russell (Sheriff Hunt), Patrick Wilson (Arthur), Matthew Fox (Brooder), Richard Jenkins (Chicory), Lili Simmons (Samantha), Evan Jonigkeit (Deputy Nick), David Arquette (Purvis), Fred Melamed (Clarence), Sid Haig (Buddy).

S. Craig Zahler’s directing debut Bone Tomahawk is a sturdy, old fashioned Western for most of its running time, before becoming a brutally violent horror film in its third act – a genre hop that most movies of its sort couldn’t handle, but this does with ease. From its first scene – of two criminals (played by David Arquette and Sid Haig), the movie is clearly a self-aware Western, and while it certainly references the work of John Ford – notably, The Searchers – it also subtly subverts the genre throughout. The key attributes of the movie are the cast – all of whom are game, and clearly relishing their roles, and the dialogue which is witty and slyly humorous throughout. Looking at the films IMDB page, I noticed that it said that the film’s screenplay was shot on its first draft – and that I have no problem believing, as the film clocks in at 132 minutes, which is probably 30 too many, and another pass at the screenplay may have yielded a tighter film. Not that a tighter film would have necessarily been an improvement, as one of the chief joys of Bone Tomahawk is how it takes its time with its tangents (it’s not unlike a Tarantino movie in that way), but it also may have cut down on its repetition.

When you boil down Bone Tomahawk to its essentials, it is basically about the Wild West being populated by idiots, who make one mistake after another, that dig them into a deeper hole. The main action of the movie gets started when Sheriff Hunt (Kurt Russell) shoots the surviving criminal (Arquette) from that opening sequence, because his Deputy, Chicory (Richard Jenkins) tells the Sheriff that he was acting suspicious – which he was. Hunt doesn’t kill Arquette, just shoots him in the leg, but the wound is enough that they send for the town doctor, Samantha O’Dwyer (Lili Simmons), who mends the wound, but realizing her patient has a fever decides to spend the night at the jail to monitor him. Another Deputy, Nick (Evan Jonigkeit) stays with her – and the next morning, all three of them have vanished, and a stable boy has been brutally killed. It’s those savage Indians, no doubt, and a quick interrogation of one Indian lets them know what tribe they are looking for – some cave dwellers that he refers to as “troglodytes”. It wasn’t too smart to shoot the criminal in the first place – he was a criminal, but there were other ways to handle the situation. And it certainly isn’t smart for four men – Hunt and Chicory are joined by Samantha’s husband, Arthur (Patrick Wilson), despite a broken leg, and Brooder (Matthew Fox), who speaks with an Eastern accent, but boasts of being a Indian killing machine, to head out to try and track them down – but they do so anyway. Most of the movie is these four men on the trial – before they do finally arrive, and get more than they bargained for from the tribe.

Zahler is a novelist, and that shows in this movie, as it certainly does take its time getting anywhere, and prizes dialogue over action for the majority of its runtime. If the dialogue wasn’t so good, and wasn’t delivered so well by the actors, Bone Tomahawk would risk being dull and slow. But it works – especially with Kurt Russell in the lead role – one of two 2015 movies where he is essentially playing a John Wayne character (alongside Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight), but showing us the deficiencies of that sort of character in reality. Richard Jenkins is a pure joy as Chicory – which is basically a role that Walter Huston would have killed back in the 1940s as the somewhat foolish old timer, who may be better than we think. Matthew Fox is clearly having fun as Brooder, more upper class and refined, than the rest of them – and also more boastful. Patrick Wilson is fine as Arthur, but it’s clearly the dullest of the four major roles, as he basically grimaces in pain from his leg for much of the films running time, but keeps on trucking (but hell, DiCaprio is about to win an Oscar for doing that).

The left field turn in the final act, becoming far more brutally violent than anticipated works because Zahler is so committed to it. The word “savages” was a staple of old Westerns to describe Native Americans – most often unfairly, but here they really are savages. Yes, you could say the film is problematic, in that this tribe confirms the savage label placed upon the Native Americans in Westerns – but that’s assuming you think that this tribe is Native American – or hell, human – which I don’t think they are.

It must be said that, unsurprisingly, Zahler is a better writer than he is a director. For the most part, this is a fairly straight forward looking film – and its small budget at times shows, including in the horror elements that end the film. This is a film crying out for more style than Zahler can muster. Yet, the ideas, writing and acting in the film make it well worth seeing – hell, it would make an interesting part of a triple bill alongside the biggest Western of 2015 – The Hateful Eight and The Revenant – as it somewhat critiques both films, that obviously Zahler had no way of seeing before he made it, but still it fits. Zahler needs more experience as a director to be sure – but Bone Tomahawk is a fine place to start.