A thrilling contemporary crime drama that grapples with our current state of affairs with an apolitical outlook.
From the mind of Bone Tomahawk and Brawl in Cell Block 99, comes S. Craig Zahler’s most recent effort, Dragged Across Concrete. A tightly knit effort with sharp writing and superb direction from one of cinema’s most provocative American film-makers working today.
Zahler’s apolitical approach allows Concrete to open up itself to the viewer. Allowing us to take in the world for what it is and using our own perception of this world to formulate a stance. It’s emblematic of the freedoms America grants us in regards to personal choice. The way he frames the fictional city of Bulwark is representative of our current political climate, and he never once uses the camera or score to tell us how to feel. It’s simply presented from character’s perspectives, and although some get more backstory than others, that doesn’t make them worthy of empathy.
Violence, greed, corruption, and crookedness make up the personality of the world and it’s characters, and it benefits from being morally ambiguous as it presents heinous acts. It’s never written or framed in a way that tells you who to root for, or if you should root for anyone at all. We are asked to participate with the film in a way that challenges our perception of good and evil based on how the media, or hell, even cinema has framed it. How thin that line really is and how easily it can be crossed, and how no matter how family-oriented someone is, that doesn’t excuse obscene behavior.
S. Craig Zahler is a man that lives in the moment. Someone who is so fully aware of culture, bias, people, politics, and his ability to account for all of these things in creating a living, breathing world is breathtaking. Concrete is a long film, and might even run too long, but a shorter runtime may have eliminated the spaces in which these characters inhabit. This is a movie that works because of it’s world, it’s smell, it’s stature, it’s people, and it’s approach to storytelling. This could have easily been another tone deaf crime drama that acts like the world is more black and white than it really is, but Zahler says, “To Hell with that.” Zahler is making provocative cinema in ways we haven’t felt in a while, and I will be there for anything he does from here on out.
Might be one of my favorite film-makers...
Dragged Across Concrete gets a 93/100