Steven Craig Zahler looks like becoming a major force in the darker end of American cinema. His first two features gained attention and criticism for their unbridled violence and moral ambiguity. His technical prowess is impressive; his gifts as a dramatist, too. Just don't call him nice or restrained.
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Dragged Across Concrete is compelling and ultra-violent. In one scene, a man takes a big knife to a corpse to find a key the guy swallowed before they shot him. There are many ways to shoot that scene - Zahler goes with the one that's most graphic.
On the other hand, the bank robbery that gets the plot humming takes place largely off-screen. A number of people die and Zahler doesn't show it. Why?
My guess is that he wanted to hold the violence for the finale, which is a small masterclass in how to direct a shootout. Zahler is like Tarantino, only more so. Violence in his films is not meaningless; indeed, it may be the most meaningful thing about his films, the thing that connects him to the real world. The title gives us a sense of that world: mean, urban and unforgiving.
Zahler goes out of his way to thumb his nose at woke politics. Just the casting of Mel Gibson as a racist cop gives an idea of how little he cares for polite notions of what you can and can't say or who you can cast.
In the first reel, Detective Ridgeman (Gibson) and his partner Lurasetti (Vince Vaughn) take down an Hispanic drug dealer with extra roughness. Someone catches it on their phone and makes it public. The two detectives are suspended for six weeks. Gibson and Vaughn are deadpan and deadly here, as characters who are more thoughtful than they might sound.
In a parallel story, Henry Johns (Tory Kittles) returns home after a stretch in jail to find his mother turning tricks while his disabled younger brother lingers in his bedroom playing shooter video games. In desperation, Johns and his friend Biscuit (Michael Jai White) join a crew they don't know for a big heist.
Meanwhile, Ridgeman and Lurasetti, now unofficial, stake out a drug dealer to rob him. After 40 years in the force and no promotion, Ridgeman has had it with the rules.
In both stories, Zahler emphasises that these opposites, the white detective and the black former convict, are trying to get money for their families. Simple greed isn't the motive.
These stories are stretched along the fault lines of colour - where Tarantino also likes to play - but it's harder to decode what Zahler is saying. He maintains that he does not write from a political standpoint, but that's horse manure: Dragged Across Concrete is one long (and I do mean long) political statement about the ugliness and violence of America.
More precisely, it's a series of statements. Zahler offers a range of viewpoints: the film is like a compendium of good and evil. It's just hard sometimes to know which is which.
All the while, the film is visually and aurally rich. Zahler's dialogue is sharp and literary; his characters sound like they have read books. Zahler doesn't cut unless he has to, so his scenes have a slower, deliberate rhythm. More jazz than rock 'n' roll, in that sense, although a comparison with heavy metal might be better.
Zahler actually plays metal in another guise, as a drummer under the name Czar. He also writes western and science fiction novels. He trained initially at NYU as a cinematographer. Very few directors have his combination of film literacy and death metal punk attitude.
Dragged Across Concrete feels like you're dangling on the end of a meat hook. It's painful and tense and at the same time, a little ridiculous. A few scenes are played for grim humour, then the shooting starts. Even then, it's full of surprises, and riches for those who like it darker.
