Writer, screenwriter, DOP and occasional film critic S. Craig Zahler launched his debut feature film, Bone Tomahawk, in 2015. In this terrifying yet original western horror, a group of people (led by a sheriff, in a performance by Kurt Russell) leaves on a searching party for a woman that has been kidnapped by a tribe of Indian cannibals. Their endeavour slowly turns into a full-blown carnage, in a representation that bridges the gap between the western films of John Ford and the horror movies of Eli Roth. It’s a combination that is at least daring, which brings together the styles of two different filmmakers that weren’t contemporary. Not in the least, it’s also a film which announces Zahler as a very interesting director.

Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017), Zahler’s second feature, is a prison film starring Vince Vaughn as a failed boxer with an unravelling marriage, and sees him losing his temper and making some very bad choices. The film becomes increasingly brutal across its runtime – a nod to the oldtime grindhouse/midnight movies, which is represented by means that take themselves seriously.

His third feature, Dragged Across Concrete (which passed almost unnoticed through Romanian cinemas some months ago – specifically, in springtime), is a true feast for action film aficionados that are armed with a sufficient dose of patience, even though Zahler has the necessary know-how to keep his audience members hooked over the course of two and a half hours, irrespective of their affinities. In this massive heist movie, detectives Bret Ridgman (Mel Gibson) and Anthony Lurasetti (Vince Vaughn) become viral after they’re recorded during a botched arrest. This leads to their boss L (Don Johnson) suspending them for some time – an occasion for Ridgman to remind Lurasetti that they’re knowledgeable enough to make money on their own. Henceforth, using a tip-off  that they extort out of a seedy jewellery artisan, old cop Ridgman proposes young cop Lurasetti to rob other prospective bank robbers. Some discussions later – which pose existential problems for the younger, more sophisticated copper – the two policemen will turn into the predators of predators during a heist – that is, until someone will turn the situation into something much worse than that.

A lot of critical voices (some of them quite imposing) were quick to apply a tarantinoesque filter to  this film. In fact, it’s quite easy to spot certain stylistic motifs which nod quite stridently towards the towering, influential auteur. But Zahler doesn’t work like that. For example, Porumboiu’s latest feature, La Gomera, has much more to thank to Tarantino’s films than Dragged Across Concrete could. Here, Zahler has his own style of intercutting the destinies of his characters – he avoids constructing chapters out of them, which would, for example, (at least try to) simplify the narrative course in the eyes of the audience. For sure, there are certain scenes which remind of Reservoir Dogs (for example, an accidental shot which is fired by one of the victims of the unfortunate situation) or to Jackie Brown (the incident in the minivan between the characters played by Samuel L. Jackson and Robert De Niro), but, again, Zahler has an original vision in regards to things that might seem similar in a given set of narrative circumstances. Even in spite of his usage of the classical police-detective duo (which are separated by a considerable difference in age and life perspectives), the film finds different means to “reproduce clichees”. He creates avatar-characters, which are then surrounded by an ever decreasing circle; thusly, the structure invites the usage of narrative parentheses, which come across as highly important in an interpretative context that is familiar and dramatic (the most eloquent example of this would be the sequence featuring the bank employee, who is otherwise just a collateral victim). Another adjustment, this time in terms of introduction and significance, takes shape in the narrative thread which follows the release of Henry Johns (Tonny Kittles) from prison, returning home to find his mother working as a prostitute and his little, physically disabled brother playing retro video games with an air of intentional resignation and absence. In an act of desperation, Johns and his friend, Biscuit (Michael Jay White) decide to join the violet bank robber gang. Also important is the fact that Zahler decides to sever any ties to musical cues. In contrast to Tarantino’s films, Dragged Across Concrete makes away with the typical, oh-so-celebrated pop playlists and his savvy, glossy way of framing his shots around them. Instead (and luckily so), he decides to opt for an approach that is rooted in shots with depth of field while the sound reflects the uneasy squirms of the detectives, whom are always seen in tight spaces – in the car from which they monitor their prey, where they sleep and eat (sometimes, in real time), and the noises Vince Vaughn makes by constantly shifting in his seemingly small leather jacket become an integral part of the film’s sound design.

It’s a film that literally understands its own title towards the end, one that is ruthless with the characters that are given time to become sympathetic – it’s simultaneously objective and brutal. There are surprises coming in from all directions for those who might expect a Michael Mann that is banal and perseverent, instead offering explosions, people of screaming at the sound of machine gun shots, set pieces from other films being blown up… It’s a heist movie unlike any other that came before, although it’s quite clear that it’s a film that nods rather towards Don Siegel or Jean-Pierre Melville than – as I said before – to Tarantino. Of course, to those that are already familiar with Zahler’s previous films, this shouldn’t come across as a shock, but he has enough reasons to completely upstart popular films such as Lethal Weapon. 

In my opinion, Dragged Across Concrete is one of the year’s top films. S. Craig Zahler is a filmmaker that should be closely watched in the future – he’s a fresh voice in the milieu of action films, a revisionist.

Sebastian M. Ceolca

Film critic since 2008, film lover since he was 4 years old. Former editor for the ART7 cultural platform and former film programmer for the "Horror Saturday" section of the Romanian Cinematheque. He writes film and festival reviews wherever he can and wherever he is invited to do so. He loves cats, like most humans do, he's an amateur ornithologist and he'd much rather see a good 80s horror film than an awarded hollywoodian drama.