Before I begin this post, let me preface I like movies and stories where the main characters aren’t the most likable. But there has to be some dimension to characters. And while people might draw comparisons to Dirty Harry and To Live and Die in L.A., Dragged Across Concrete isn’t in the same league.
I remember the scene in Harry where the titular character is trying to get information out of the Scorpio Killer who he’s wounded. We’ve already seen this character in action so we’ve lost sympathy for him as he’s killed a woman, a young boy and has a teenage girl kidnapped. Like Harry Callahan, we don’t care for this man and his injury. As Harry presses his foot on the wounded leg, we feel a sense that he is getting what he deserves.
The characters in Dragged are so despicable and generic, it’s hard to justify their actions and they seem almost comical. Set in the fictional city of Bulwark (to avoid any legalities more than likely), two police detectives Brett Ridgeman (Mel Gibson who says every line of dialogue like he’s been constipated for a week) and Anthony Lurasetti (Vince Vaughn performing in his usual lazy style that was okay 25 years ago but tiresome now) are suspended without pay for six weeks when cell phone video is released of them being too rough with a drug dealer.
From the minute we see the two, we don’t like them and know there’s no redeeming quality about them. This movie is advertised as a gritty cop thriller but looks more like it should be a documentary on current police. They harass the drug dealer’s girlfiend who is half-naked preventing her from covering up with anything but her hands. And to make matters worse, Ridgeman lives in a neighborhood where his daughter, Sara (Jordan Ashley Olson) is harassed by the black people in the neighborhood. Oh, yes, this movie hates non-whites with a passion.
Later, Ridgeman and his wife, Melanie (Laurie Holden) have a discussion about if they don’t get out of the neighbhood soon enough Sara will be raped. As if rape and sexual assault doesn’t exist in the suburbs and affluent neighborhoods. There’s also another story about a recent parolee Henry Johns (Tory Kittles) coming home to find his mother, Jennifer (Vanessa Bell Calloway), has turned to prostitution. And her john is a white guy who Henry threatens with a baseball bat and insults further by telling him to grab the trash on his way out.
Boy howdy, writer-director S. Craigh Zahler is sure making the Proud Boys who have been jacking off to this movie for five years proud with this conservative MAGA porn. All women in this movie are either victims of harassment by non-white people or they’re murdered victims who get more gruesome deaths than the other bad guys There’s a subplot about a young mom, Kelly Summer (Jennifer Carpenter), upset about leaving her baby alone after having to go back to work after three months of maternity leave. She becomes a victim in botched robbery where her fingers and hand is shot off, then, her face is brutally ripped to shreds by AR-15 fire as she tries to plead with the robbers about her baby.
If it’s meant to have any cartharis, Zahler quick cuts to an employee’s reaction before switching the scene. Her other colleague at the bank, Cheryl (Justine Warrington) suffers a more horrible fate as she is kidnapped, gagged and beaten in the back of a getaway van to the point where she urinates all over herself. And then, the robbers tear off her panties to clean it up. She is later shot by Ridgeman in the face when she shoots Lurasetti who she doesn’t know is a threat. How did she get the gun? I don’t know Was she an inside person? I don’t know. Zahler gives us long scenes of Vaughn eating a sandwhich but can’t explain this.
Oh and Lusaretti has a girlfriend, Denise (Tattiawna Jones) who appears in two scenes, maybe three and isn’t given much sympathy either. He wants to propose to her so he goes and purchases a ring that he hides for her to find. And she declines his proposal in a voicemail. Zahler isn’t married and said he has no interest in ever getting married. Don’t worry, buddy. The way you view women, you won’t be beating them off with a stick. A good test of a man is how he treats animals and how he treats women. There’s no animals in this movie probably because he knew the Humane Society wouldn’t put up with his shit.
It’s obvious Zahler sees himself in the same league as directors like Sam Peckinpah, Don Seigel (who directed Dirty Harry), Walter Hill, William Friedkin and Michael Mann. And while those directors made movies that focused on hardened men grizzled by rough pasts and graphic violence, there was substance to the plots. There’s scenes in this movie where Ridgeman and Lusaretti sit around bemoaning that they’re having to live in changing times where white men don’t have total authority. Even a scene with their supervisor Cheif Lieutenant Calvert (Don Johnson) focuses on how things have gotten different. I’m surprised they didn’t all go outside and yell at the clouds for good effort.
Several years ago, Zahler made a creepy movie Bone Tomahawk, which focused on cannibalistic Native Americans. For what it’s worth, it was a good thriller with a cast that included Kurt Russell, Matthew Fox, Richard Jenkins and Patrick Wilson with small roles by David Arquette and Sid Haig. It was able to combine western and horror even though some scenes were too graphic at times. Zahler is obviously thinking he’s the second-coming of Quentin Tarantino but doesn’t understand what QT has been able to do.
This movie recently was a top view on Netflix. That’s more telling about people who view Netflix. But at two and a half hours long, it’s quite possible, people used it as background noise. At least, Gibson is finally embracing the racist, sexist bigot he’s always been and starting to take on roles that’s show that. At one time, he was called the Sexiest Man Alive and women all over the world fawned over him. Now, he’s just an grumpy old man telling people to “Get off my lawn!”
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 