Butler's Cinema Scene

Mel Gibson, Vince Vaughn

“DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE” My rating: B+

159 minutes | MPAA rating: R

With its loquacious cops and crooks and pages of dialogue devoted to the amusingly mundane (Quarter Pounders with cheese, egg salad sandwiches), “Dragged Across Concrete” will remind many of a Quentin Tarantino film, especially “Pulp Fiction.”

But it also bears comparison to Michael Mann’s “Heat,” for this curiously affecting crime epic (nearly three hours) is less about black and white than shades of gray.

Add to the mix Mel Gibson chewing on his best role in ages, and the latest from writer/director S. Craig Zahler (“Bone Tomahawk”) shapes up as an unexpected treat that digs into the viewer’s head and hangs around long after the lights come up.

At the center of this sprawling tale are a couple of police detectives — Ridgeman and Lurasetti (Gibson and Vince Vaughn) — who’ve drawn long unpaid suspensions for brutalizing a suspect.  Desperate for money, Ridgeman talks his reluctant partner into tailing a suave  criminal (Thomas Kretschmann); the hope is that he will lead the pair to some sort of drug deal or robbery that they can interrupt, making off with the cash and contraband.

Ultimately the two cops find themselves wading through the aftermath of a bloody bank heist. Few are left standing.

But around this dramatic core Zahler has introduced a big cast of characters — lawmen, criminals and common citizens caught in the crossfire — and given each enough backstory that we begin to identify with them on a much deeper level.

Gibson’s Ridgeman, for instance, is a tough street cop bitter that his refusal to schmooze has left his career in the dust. Now he’s coping with an ailing wife (Laurie Holden) and a teenage daughter terrified of the only neighborhood they can afford to live in. On the job Ridgeman may seem like semi-racist thug; at home we see a different side of the man.

And then there’s Johns (Tory Kittles), a recent parolee coping with a drug-addled mother and a crippled son.  As much as he’d like to stay clean, his only hope for a payday is to team up with his old ‘hood bud Biscuit (Michael Jai White) as wheelmen for a gang of trigger-happy robbers (a gig that requires them to don longish wigs and makeup to pass for white).

Halfway through we are introduced to Kelly (Jennifer Carpenter), a new mom so unwilling to leave her baby that she’s used up all her maternity and sick leave; now she must return to work — at a bank.  Savvy filmgoers may guess what happens next.

Zahler introduces characters without a clue as to the role they will play in the overall story arc, with the result that we are continually being taken by surprise.

And he’s in no hurry, relishing long discussions that unfold in real time. The two suspended cops while away an all-night stakeout with bickering conversation;  later they carefully lay siege to an armored truck in which the bad guys are holding a hostage.

For that matter, Johns and Biscuit reminisce about their shared childhoods.

Zahler rarely lets us write off a character as simply a good guy or a bad guy; the motivations and histories on display here are way too complicated and nuanced for that.

Thus, when the film  turns to violence, it’s vastly more disturbing than it would be in a garden variety cops-n-robbers scenario.

The film is filled with small gems of performance — like Don Johnson’s turn as Ridgeman and Lurasetti’s politically savvy boss or Fred Melamed as an unctous bank manager.

And throughout Zahler proves  a master of timing and surprising dramatic structure. “Dragged…” may have a running time of 159 minutes, but it’s never boring.

And when it’s over you’re ready for more.

| Robert W. Butler