With his first two features, Bone Tomahawk and Brawl in Cell Block 99, director S Craig Zahler served up helpings of gleefully extreme B-movie violence. But in his latest, which pits a pair of suspended cops against a gang of ruthless criminals in a race to the very bottom of civilisation, something of the sparky anarchy and mischief has been extinguished. Dragged Across Concrete is, unfortunately, kind of a drag. That’s partly because of the running time – more than two and half hours – which breaks the first rule of genre cinema: that it should be short, sharp and shocking. But it’s largely because the film spends so much time trying to manufacture sympathy for the two cops, played by Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn, who are inherently unsympathetic from the moment we see them stomping on a suspect’s head. Then there’s the cynicism of introducing a female character’s back story for the sole purpose of making us feel worse when she gets shot. I’ll pass.
