The goal of /r/Movies is to provide an inclusive place for discussions and news about films with major releases. Submissions should be for the purpose of informing or initiating a discussion, not just to entertain readers. Read our extensive list of rules for more information on other types of posts like fan-art and self-promotion, or message the moderators if you have any questions.
“Dragged Across Concrete” is great...
... it’s right in the vein of movies I love. Realistic aggressive gritty heist movies. It’s not Heat obviously, but it reminds me of Heat. Any 2.5 hour mice that devotes the last half to one gunplay stand-off is A-OK in my books. And Craig does it without it being overly cheesy or derivative. It’s super weird and the beats are unexpected. Anyone else dig it?
Yeah it was fantastic. I Loved the dialogue between the 2 mains. Also the army of two style gunfight is sick
U get it.
Have you watched brawl in cell block 99? It's also really good by same director. Very gritty and a touch of grind house to it.
Yup a couple times. Loved it.
Brawl or Bone?
I found Brawl to be a much tighter, focused film, and prefer it for that reason. I like BT quite a lot, but feel that it meanders at times (and that’s coming from a big fan of Westerns).
Both are top-tier in terms of spine-chilling death scenes, though.
Nice. Would love to hear some of your favorite westerns. I love Sergio Leone's films, but I don't know more of the more obscure ones.
I love movies where the ending is hopeless so the character just goes all out.
Brawl in cell block is actual dogshit, after watching Bone Tomahawk which is actually really good and been recommended Brawl I honestly find it difficult to understand how it's so highly regarded.
Been downvoted for an opinion but honestly watch it for a bit, it looks like a student film that's been coloured with instagram filters.
With you 10000%. I really really like S Craig Zahler, and DAC is one of my favs of the decade, but Brawn is utter shit.
I get it’s supposed to be shit, that’s like... the joke... but it’s still shit, and people also act like it’s not supposed to be shit. Like, when it came out I got a hundred downvotes in the megathread when I mentioned the campy effects, the dummies, etc. Like, people actually thought the effects were good and realistic... which they intentionally weren’t!
I completely agree. Not only does the movie suck, its fans don’t even understand it it seems.
Yeah I get downvoted for not liking it either but I can't bring myself to not mention how bad and disappointing it is. To me its just laughably bad but we're clearly in the minority.
Yeah, oh well. I was very surprised to come here after seeing it opening night, thought for sure everyone would have had a similar opinion on it.
Especially compared to Zahler's other work. It'd be like if Nolan directed A Superhero Movie starring Drake Bell and then returned to do Inception.
“Is this a guy or a girl singing this song?”
“Can’t tell.”
“Not that there’s much of a difference these days. I think that line was obliterated the day men started saying, ‘We’re pregnant,’ when their wives were.”
“ Being Branded a racist in today’s public forum is like being branded a communist in the 1950s”
I don't think anyone better exemplifies "mean & nasty" films better than Craig Zahler.
Easily one of the more interesting filmmakers out there right now. Everything he does will make you uncomfortable in one way or another.
But that mansion ending, plus the gold delivery, made me super happy.
All the characters go through a long tunnel until they see the light.
After Bone Tomahawk & Brawl in Cell 99 I was pretty pumped for this but found this pretty lacking. It's not bad but after the other 2 I had really high expectations. Still excited for what Zahler does next.
Recommend you check out those 2 if you liked Dragged Across Concrete, OP.
Yeah I liked the other 2 a lot better. Concrete wasn’t bad I loved brawl and bone tomahawk
Kinda reminds me of Jeremy Saulnier so far too. Loved Blue Ruin & Green Room but Hold the Dark was a huge miss for me. Also loved Murder Party though.
Yeah I’ve liked all his movies, especially green room. Haven’t seen murder party though
It’s very, very low budget with a real film-student vibe about it but still fun. No where NEAR as accomplished as Blue Ruin or Green Room though.
Yeah I spaced out and never finished it. I wasn't blown away by the verbal gymnastics totally not-racist dogwhistling either. I still like Zahler and Vaghn and (uhg) Gibson, but in a "love the art" type of way.
My friend told me to put it on without reading anything about it... I went in 100% blind. It was fantastic.
Some of the dialogue pulled me out of the movie but I was engaged until I was gripped and then I couldn't look away. It was a slow burn for sure.
(SPOILERS)
Yup agreed. And that death is so gnarly.
But wasn't this scene was an obvious bait for that kind of response? It was clear when she was crying in the hallway that she was going to die, the elaborate backstory serves to purpose other than to make you feel sorry for her when she has a comically brutal death (and to suggest that women shouldn't return to work after childbirth).
I think it's powerful in how erroneously horrible it is, if that makes sense? Like it is a direct shot of empathy into your veins.
I haven't seen a Zahler film beore but seen his name around, so I went into this blind and I absolutely loved it. It was dark, it was hilarious, it was simply just a nasty, fucked up tale of crime and it was criminally underseen...
But I guess sure it can be a discussion b/c i've always wanted to make a topic but figured nobody would give a shit - I googled the film and it received middle of the road reviews, but lots of articles I couldn't help but notice was "right wing fantasy" from fairly big critic names and it was a repeated thread "you're MAGA if you love this" and I only bring this up b/c someone I recommended the movie to brought this up after looking it up and questioned me lol.
I mean like, w/o getting too political, the characters are who they are and react accordingly, like just looking at the film alone, I personally would say everyone is an anti-hero or even just an asshole. I mean, that'd be like saying "In Bruges" is a fucking right-wing fantasy b/c the beliefs of the main characters aren't PC.
I don't know, just my two cents, I feel like this movie was unfairly labeled as this weird right-wing jerk off when really, it's a fucked up movie following fucked up people making fucked up decisions when, in the end, the best man won imo.
I don't personally like the film very much, but I hard disagree that it's right-wing fantasy. I think Zhaler himself is a conservative guy and that reflects to some extent in all of his movies, but nothing overt here.
What did it, I think, was that a lot of people made up it's mind before it came out. The synopsis was 'Two cops are recorded doing police brutality and go on a crime spree through the ghetto for revenge, starring Mel Gibson'. That sounds a lot different than what the movie actually ended up being. From the get-go people imagined it would be cop and conservative propaganda but I don't think the film took much of a political leaning one way or the other. The cops are dirty as shit and mostly unlikable, the criminals (aside from the guy at the start of the movie) for the most part seem like decent people caught up in a shit situation.
I saw a lot of reviews after the fact claiming things about the movie that just didn't happen, or were taken wildly out of context, to make it seem pro-police-brutality. I'm skeptical if some of them actually watched the movie.
I had never actually heard that type of criticism about this film. Not sure where they are getting that from.
I just recently re-watched it with this in mind and I guess they're getting it from some un-PC things that Don Johnson's character says when confronting them about the cell phone footage, which some could interpret as the a tangent from Zahler himself...and of course the many things Gibson's character (or hell, Gibson himself lol) says.
I still see it as, whether we want to admit it or not, a more realistic-ish take on that world that would surely be inhabited by those types of people with those types of mindsets.
And also, these reviews always leave out Tory Kittles' character, who is just as much a major player (if not moreso) as Gibson and Vaughn (but of coruse, not as a big a name so it's not advertised)....
But can we talk about Kittles' performance though and when he finally connects with Gibson - I fuckin love their exchange.
Those things are realistic coming from people work those mindsets, but the question still remains as to why the filmmaker thought it was important for the audience to hear those characters get on their soapboxes in such a blatant way.
IMO it’s clumsy dialogue at best, reactionary preaching at worst.
The criticism this movie received was really over the top, I don't think anyone would have made a big deal about it if it wasn't Mel Gibson. How weird would it have been if he was playing the same grizzled asshole cop character but everything he said was super woke?
Completely agree. This kinda reminds me of Narc. It doesn't hurt that this movie was filmed in my hometown ;) Funny enough I saw it filming back in the day but didn't realize it was this movie..
Yeah I remember liking Narc too. Will bed to give that a rewatch.
Nobody writes dialogue like Zahler, and for that i'm grateful.
I’m two years late to this but amen that was hard to get through.
Is it streaming? I love heist movies
Not sure but very likely
It's on Hulu! Woot
I just finished watching it on HBO Go.
It's on Amazon Prime!
Love this movie it has some great scenes!
I gotta be honest, I don't like it. On paper I should love Zahler but I don't think his writing or direction is anywhere near as good or tight as people make it out to be. I think something like Green Room is a much better example of a way to do gore/tension building than anything Zahler has done.
My problem with Zahler is that he only seems to know how to write one character. The dialogue between Gibson's character here, Kurt Russel in Bone, and Vaugh in Brawl is basically exactly the same and usually awkward. Very disjointed and unrealistic. It works best in Bone's setting the first time you hear it, but when you hear it again in every movie it becomes obvious that it's just the director monolognig.
Green Room is a good example because the violence is much tighter, the pace is much steadier, the characters even with little dialogue feel pretty well realized, and frankly it's just shot in more interesting ways.
Big Saulnier fan here too. Liked Blue Ruin the best of his films so far.
That Jennifer Carpenter scene felt like something out of a giallo film.
Dragged is good
Brawl is better
Very different but I like em both!
I loved the villains in the movie, absolutely terrifying
It's too long.
It's a good example of how sometimes, when you make a slow-paced film, you just end up with a slow-paced film.
Disagree!
It's not even slow paced. Every scene is moving the plot forward.
Yeah that 30 minute Jennifer carpenter scene really moved the plot along.
It had an important reason to be there and if you didn't get it I'm not going to bother explaining it
The Jennifer Carpenter scene is both very effective for what it is (in a dramatic and emotional sense) and also a troll. Unless Zahler is an idiot (which I doubt), he was fully aware that her scenes were very long, had an effect on the pace, and that the conclusion to her character is gleefully, almost comically cruel on both the character and the audience.
Haha. Love when people say shit like that. Makes me feel right.
It absolutely is a slow paced movie. What a weird thing to deny.
It has a runtime of 159 minutes and the plot of a 120 minute-long movie. The movie has such a runtime because events unfold in a deliberately slow way. For example, here's a 1 minute long scene of Vince Vaughn just eating. The dialogue is delivered slowly and with a lot of pauses.
It's the director's style, he contrasts the slow, leisurely pace with scenes of brutality and nihilism presented in a very detached manner. The problem is that, whereas Bone Tomahawk and Brawl in Cell Block 99 were 132 minutes long (slightly more than the typical drama), Dragged Across Concrete is 159 minutes long. Most movies aren't 159 minutes long; it's legitimately difficult to keep an audience interested in a movie that long, even moreso when the style is not viscerally appealing.
Craig Zahler is one of my favourite modern directors but he needs an editor, each of his movies has been about half an hour too long.
It’s the only movie to accurately portray how boring a police stakeout is. I loved it.
If I didn’t like bone tomahawk would I like this one?
Totally different. Modern day cop heist kinda thing. Not a period piece. But also hyper violent like BT
Dragged is still pretty gritty but it is nowhere near the level of brutality as Bone Tomahawk
Depends what you didn't like about it. My problem with this guy's movies is that his characters are all written the same and the dialogue is incredibly awkward. That's still true here. This is probably a better made film all around and doesn't feel as low-budget as Bone Tomahawk, but with that said I think Bone is still the better and more engaging movie.
I agree with the dialogue criticism of this movie and Brawl, but I think the characterization was actually a strong suit for Bone. Russell, Jenkins, Fox and Wilson—and even Haig and Arquette—all had distinct voices and interacted with each other accordingly.
I think that’s part of why Brawl and Dragged were such disappointments for me; because Bone has some real strengths beyond the violence.
I watched this movie with my best friends in a theater way out of the way as a joke. I walked out of it with a lot of respect for Zahler. It was a great experience and it’s definitely one of my favorite movies. It doesn’t help that I’m a sucker for films that are a slow burn.
Watched this on a whim a couple weeks ago and loved it. As the title suggests, it’s unrelentingly dark. Also had featured probably most menacing villains I’ve ever seen in a film, ever.
Yup. That bad guy is a total creep and so effective
New favorite line to use in daily life:
"Smells like anchovies."
I guess I’ll be in the minority in this thread, but I found the film very disappointing. Some of my favorite films are long and slow, but this one was just boring, with poor dialogue and long moments that were supposed to be tense but came across as contrived.
Honestly, and perhaps ironically, I think that Zahler needs to slow down, as each film is worse than the last.
Bone Tomahawk was invigorating and exciting—and likely the result of tons of self-editing and drafts to get the film to where it was. Since then, I feel like we’re getting his first draft efforts. Brawl opened with about 40 minutes of boring and badly shot backstory that should have been cut and ends up as a 2.5-hour long grindhouse film with nothing to say. Dragged just drags.
That being said, I really enjoy the brutality in his films. I just wish those moments had more interesting characters and compelling narratives around them.
Finally got round to watching it last night, blew me away! It really is so good. I do enjoy a slow burn film when done well, didn’t even feel like a long running time as I was totally absorbed by it. Films that have room to breath feel so much more authentic and when it does ‘kick off’ it has so much more impact. Just ordered BiCB99 & AsylumBlackout/TheIncident as I never saw either.
Bone Tomahawk is also a slow burn and pretty graphic iirc.
I assumed it was a comedy when I first heard of it. I forgot all about it until watching S. Craig Zahler's other movies and finding he wrote this too.
Well both are great but was refering to brawl.
Loved it! The time taken to establish character gives the ending some real oomph!
Bone Tomahawk is done similarly, if you haven’t seen it
Was kinda blown away after i put it on randomly, then went to imdb to see what people had to say about it and was blown away once more.
I liked his first two films, Bone Tomahawk was especially great, but I was kind of meh'd by Dragged and surprised that I was. I like Mel Gibson and thought this was the perfect kind of vehicle for him, but just felt the dialogue didn't mesh well with what they were doing. Vaughn and Gibson came across as two guys who knew they were in a movie.
Some of the stuff in the movie worked very well, the ride after the heist was tense as anything I've watched in a while. I love the way Zahler does violence/action in quick and tight ways while showing the viewer it all.
Wasn't bad or anything, but think it was his weakest film so far.
I liked his previous movies, but this is the first one where the directors politics got in the way of enjoying the movie. The bank heist scene was awesome. The dragged out political commentary by the lead characters was less so.
Nothing to do with me agreeing or disagreeing with the politics, by the way. To be immersive it's better if the story just unfolds from the characters and their situation, so you are not aware of a director/screenwriter trying to make a point.
Yeah, there's a pretty huge irony to Zahler whining that movies are too political now and then having Mel Gibson monologue to the camera about cancel culture lmao
That's what I had heard about it and was expecting something very off-putting, but I found the characters each paid a price for their worldviews.
I'm a big fan of this film. Seen it recently and I'm already tempted to put it on again. I really like that this and Bone Tomahawk feel like hangout movies to some degree, and the dialogue is killer (I know some people hate it)
Also that gyro stakeout scene is a classic
A single red ant could have eaten it faster.
Zahler is my favorite director and writer right now. He has a new book coming out soon.
A film that went on far longer than needed.
Also why didn't the sniper rifle make at least a dent in the van. At times it was suspending reality to a degree that it was noticeably obvious.
He is slowly becoming one of my favorite directors. He is also an amazing writers, he is currently adapting his novel mean business on north ganson street.
Def one of the normal movies I've seen recently.
Totally disagree with weird, as I really didn't see anything weird other than the cheesy acting put forth by Vaughn and Gibson respectively in the beginning of the film.
So much movies do this genre 20 x better. No character development, no redeeming qualities with any characters. The black guys a loyal pussy, the villains commit mindless violence and not enough of it, Gibson is a racist and Vaughn needs to lay off the snacks on the stake outs.
If the movie was an hour long it would of been epic.
Anchovies……. Bad cops that won’t swear? The movie opens on a sex scene and gee wiz no one seems to want to have a bad mouth. Crud man. The dialogue was so awefup. The sound was terrible at parts. Don’t blame the actors. The writing and pacing were so bad. Cough Vince Vaughn is not a dramatic actor cough.