Review: ‘Dragged Across Concrete’ Features Great, Morally Complex Crime Storytelling
Zahler’s third, and for now final, film might be his best
It’s difficult to rank the films of S. Craig Zahler, despite their abundantly clear shared traits. All three of his feature films to date are throwbacks to exploitation cinema, formally minimal but written in such a way that they become quite complex and daring. They are violent, and can be cruel. And yet, they all remain quite different. Even Brawl in Cell Block 99 has a completely different (and yet, oddly similar) tone to Dragged Across Concrete — the former is looser and more fun despite the fact that it is significantly more violent and difficult to watch at times.
It is isn’t already becoming apparent, Dragged Across Concrete is a bit of a beast to be reckoned with. I did put off this final review for the brief Zahler retrospective frankly because I was a little afraid to enter into that dance with the devil (and then to recount it later, here). The film is a 160 minute long slow burn deliberately designed to follow problematic characters — as in, morally struggling police officer who apply too much ‘cast-iron’ to those they’re seeking to arrest. It is not particularly easy to watch, despite its laughs and clear entertainment value, because it is so daring and overtly…
