Dragged across concrete4/16/2023 ![]() ![]() 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. 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. In both stories, Zahler emphasises that these opposites, the white detective and the black former convict, are trying to get money for their families. After 40 years in the force and no promotion, Ridgeman has had it with the rules. Meanwhile, Ridgeman and Lurasetti, now unofficial, stake out a drug dealer to rob him. ![]() In desperation, Johns and his friend Biscuit (Michael Jai White) join a crew they don't know for a big heist. 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. Gibson and Vaughn are deadpan and deadly here, as characters who are more thoughtful than they might sound. The two detectives are suspended for six weeks. Someone catches it on their phone and makes it public. ![]() In the first reel, Detective Ridgeman (Gibson) and his partner Lurasetti (Vince Vaughn) take down an Hispanic drug dealer with extra roughness. 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. Zahler goes out of his way to thumb his nose at woke politics. The title gives us a sense of that world: mean, urban and unforgiving. 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. My guess is that he wanted to hold the violence for the finale, which is a small masterclass in how to direct a shootout. A number of people die and Zahler doesn't show it. On the other hand, the bank robbery that gets the plot humming takes place largely off-screen. ![]()
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