S. Craig Zahler’s latest film plays like a perverse and transgressive opera of an almost forgotten world that cascades into a fierce and harrowing antiheroes journey.
Pride, honor, and sacrifice propels the trio of main characters forward, all colored in with just enough development that leaves mystery and intrigue as to remind the audience that this story started well before the cameras rolled.
The narrative rests solely on the backs of the common man who are forced to navigate a rapidly changing world that has left them all but behind.
Two cops and an ex con sacrifice everything to provide for their respective families in a film that has a meaty runtime caused by a complex story that extends its scenes to encompass the ramifications of their increasingly violent decisions laced with plenty of off color humor and the honest realities of the inadequacies of life.
The film is populated with Zahler’s main ensemble carried over from his previous film but with the marvellous addition of Tory Kittles, Michael Jai White, Thomas Kretscmann, and cinematic icon Mel Gibson that is an absolute godsend who gives a beautifully tragic showboat of a performance.
Gibson doesn’t just look older, but worn down with each wrinkle, each gray hair telling a story of his years of thankless public service.
The narrowly simplistic views of the alt right and overly woke left are apparent in Zahler’s story, only to world build and present a weariness of how ones environment turns them into a product of resentment and fundamental disdain.
The class structure has never been examined in such a cinematically retro way populated with vocational racism and residential apathy.
Dragged Across Concrete is a different film from Zahler, yet fits into his filmography as his finest and most cinematic work to date. He’s grown into one of cinema’s most important auteurs by examining the price paid of sacrifice.
Review by Frank Mengarelli
Summary
Steeped in realism and poor choices, S. Craig Zahler’s latest film is his finest to date, offering an unapologetic look into a maddening decent of sacrifice, lost hope, and broken dreams.
