Dragged Across Concrete Directed by S. Craig Zahler
Dragged Across Concrete
Directed by S. Craig Zahler
Starrings: Jennifer Carpenter, Mel Gibson, Vince Vaughn, Laurie Holden, Don Johnson, Michael Jai White, Udo Kier, Thomas Kretschmann, Tory Kittles, Justine Warrington, Fred Melamed
Year: 2018
Country: Canada
Author Review: Roberto Matteucci
Click Here for Italian Version
"It's as bad as canned lasagne."
In 2017, the director S. Craig Zahler presented, at the Venice Film Festival, Brawl in Cell Block 99. It had the characteristic of being an abundant film, oversized for violence. An allegory, a test of life in jails. Prisons around the world are not paradises with soft music played by cherub musicians, to convey serenity. They are overwhelming environments of abuse, brutality, aggression.
For the 75 Venice Film Festival, S. Craig Zahler brings the film Dragged Across Concrete. It is a cop story starring a couple of expert agents: Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn.
A film genre must have a classic structure. The two police officers are ambushing in an apartment located in a disreputable district. Inside there is a drug dealer, he is having fun with a girl. They coitus is the first sequence. The scene is in chiaroscuro.
The pusher's arrest is complicated, difficult, full of action; the good to win needs a nudge otherwise the evil would have a new affirmation.
But a neighbor - clearly a fan of evil - shoots them up with a mobile; a clear video and the news spreads the mistreatment.
Obviously, the good faith of the policemen must be punished.
The director tells the structure of the film during the Venice press conference. The interview with S. Craig Zahler is intelligent because he has clear ideas, and for the determination:
"... I like making films where story works, but the world of story is bigger than what is represented ..."
...
"... I like creating a world around not creating characters that only serve for a story ..." (1)
After the lively beginning, the structure unravels in many concise stories, short characters, minimal situations. They don't refer just a police plot, but they are free to create their own world.
Anthony - Vince - has a girlfriend, perhaps too snob, but he loves her and would like to ask her in marriage. But the suspension from job and wages do not allow him to buy a ring.
Brett - Mel Gibson - has a wife with a serious illness with an advanced paralysis and a teenage daughter. The neighborhood boys bullied her . They live in a disreputable suburb, they want to leave, they want to live in a quiet area but without a salary it's impossible.
The other side of the story. There's Ethan, just out of jail. At home, he finds a mother, a toxic, while is prostituting herself. The younger brother is in a wheelchair. He would like to find new accommodation for the family but has no money and job opportunities.
Then there's the short story of Kelly: Jennifer Carpenter. She has just had a baby and would like to remain to take care of her, but the sweet husband pushes her to go back to the job as a bank manager.
Later the different stories cross up to the cathartic and shocking conclusion.
The director uses a fast, snappy cinematographic language.
The final scene characterizes stories and people. The action is preponderant until, it unleashes itself in deeply pulp scenes, like the disgusting search for a key in a stomach.
To underline the proximity of the two policemen, the author uses a medium shot with both in the frame.
But Vince and Mel are mostly defined in a careful screenplay; also written by S. Craig Zahler. The dialogues are direct, true, daily, not artificial and not hidden behind an useless politically correct:
"Being labelled racist today and how to be considered communists in the fifties". (1)
The author, always:
"I write to my taste. I'm doing it. I think there is an integrity to the characters and it makes sense in what they say. There are obviously remarks that are provocations and throwaway jokes that may not be politically correct and they can read as such. " (2)
Mel fills the relationship between the two, framed together and with similar stories, with ironic and mathematical jokes, speaks with percentages even when he has to answer yes or no.
Dragged Across Concrete is not just a genre film, it has a social and political background. Certainly, Mel Gibson is not the idealist Dirty Harry ever willing to compromise even at the risk of sacrificing the family. Mel Gibson, on the contrary, is ready for anything and fire up a final infernal scene.
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