Latest Issue. Past Issues. Dragged Across ConcreteS. But then the conversation shifts. The speech might also be the best example of what the S. Craig Zahler movie experience feels like. Zahler is a purveyor of genre films that feature shocking violence and one-dimensional villains. Two years later, Brawl in Cell Block 99about a convict who has to fight his way through prison to save his pregnant wife from an evil abortionist, received plaudits at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals. Zahler has repeatedly rejected the notion that his movies have a certain political message.
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Jay-Z, Tina Knowles, Angela Bassett and More Toast 20 Years of Defining the Soul of Black Art
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A ll that S Craig Zahler does, he does methodically and deliberately. The director exercises surgically precise control over each minute in the nearly three-hour run time of his latest feature, Dragged Across Concrete. He crafts dialogue with the florid, evocative quality endemic to writers who get their start on pulp literature, wielding similes like brass knuckles. His supreme confidence also extends to his pacing, which both is and is not leisurely; he likes to let his moments breathe and unfold, albeit for the purpose of amplifying the agony in what are already excruciatingly intense scenes. If Zahler was some no-talent hack, it would be easy to dismiss the moral grotesquerie on display in Dragged Across Concrete as a feral howl from the fringes. His yen for ambiguity has qualified him for greater plaudits, and with them, a more stringent appraisal. Tilt your head a little to the left, and the vision of Zahler as stealth fascist starts to come into focus. In some instances, such as the Asian abortion doctor in Brawl that pops up in apparent homage to old-school Orientalism, his attachment to the past is pretty straightforwardly indefensible. But more often than not, it manifests as homage to older genre traditions. He takes his cues from Death Wish and the films of Don Siegel, where the vigilante willing to defy the law in order to enforce it reigned as king. This is also due in part to Gibson still being a very good actor, frustrating as it may be to admit.
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Trolled across concrete: why Mel Gibson’s new film is a curious provocation
The captive is a bank employee who has been snatched during a violent robbery. Some of her colleagues were killed during the heist, and one was castrated for no real reason except as a declaration of flamboyant cruelty — putatively on the part of the villains, though the blame really lies elsewhere. A severed hand or finger probably would have sent a similarly strong message to the terrified bank employees. The castration certainly underlines the depravity of the villains, who with each bullet and flick of the blade strengthen the case against them, paving the way for their preordained bloody punishment. Mostly, though, it is directorial swagger, just like the tear that spills from the duct-tape blindfold. The writer-director S. His detectives, Brett Mel Gibson and Anthony Vince Vaughn , fit their types to a T, entering the story with ready guns and well-honed cynicism. Before long, Brett is pressing one of his boots down on the neck of a handcuffed Latino suspect and tossing a near-naked Latina woman into a shower for an interrogation — a Mickey Spillane-style warm-up for the sadism to come. The story is as predictable as expected, with the usual guns, cars and money, though drawn out to an unhurried minutes. There are ostensible good men turned bad, and one who is perhaps less bad.
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Dragged Across Concrete is a American neo-noir action thriller film written and directed by S. Craig Zahler. It premiered at the 75th Venice International Film Festival on September 3,[5] and received a limited theatrical and video-on-demand simultaneous release from Summit Entertainment on March 22, In the city of Bulwark, xragged parolee Henry returns home, interrupting his mother with a customer. Chastising her for turning to prostitution, Henry reunites with his younger brother Ethan. Three weeks later, police mone Brett Ridgeman and Anthony Lurasetti raid how much money did dragged accross conrete make home of Vasquez, a known drug dealer. The bust is a success, but the detectives are called before their superior, Chief Lt. Explaining that a video of Ridgeman subduing Vasquez has been released to the media, Calvert is forced to suspend both detectives for six weeks without pay. Lurasetti is similarly desperate for money, with plans to propose to his girlfriend Denise. On a tip from Friedrich, a wealthy businessman with criminal connections, Ridgeman recruits Lurasetti to help him surveil and rob the mysterious Lorentz Vogelmann.
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