Dragged Across Concrete
Director: S. Craig Zahler
Year Released: 2018
Rating: 2.5
Detectives Ridgeman (Mel Gibson) and Lurasetti (Vince Vaughn) get suspended for using aggressive tactics with a scumbag - it was all caught on video (modern problems, amirite?) - but need money to get by, so they independently stake out a bank robbery and plan to rob the robbers ... but this does not go as smoothly as they'd like. Part of me appreciates the non-P.C. approach by Zahler of "dudes bein' dudes" and body parts getting blown off and zero-mercy shown for anyone - be it male or female, black or white - but another side wonders why this had to be close to three hours long when it offers nothing new in the police procedural genre: it's an example of hubris over economy and excess for the sake of being excessive (characters are merely introduced in order to be executed). Accusations of racism and misogyny are low-hanging fruit: Zahler's an antagonist going against the grain of "progressive culture" - which explains the title. But it doesn't explain why Vaughn's catchphrase is "anchovies" (an underrated pizza topping, in my opinion).