Dragged Across Concrete

"Having attended a very early screening of the upcoming crime film Dragged Across Concrete (which arrives in cinemas next year), critic Luke Buckmaster explains how this peculiar movie counters expectations."

"Where most filmmakers would cut, Zahler keeps the take rolling, to ratchet tension and (perhaps thanks to his novelistic leanings) to shift the tonal gears to a degree that's cinematically inspired..."

"In this new, bleak and often unexpectedly grand genre movie (it's essentially a buddy-cop flick, but with operatic ambitions), the thread out of place, both irritably scratching and strangely arresting, is Mel Gibson."

"At a whopping 158 minutes, “Concrete’s” sleek, languorous anatomy of a heist represents the filmmaker’s most extreme exercise yet in painstaking genre deceleration..."

"What Zahler has essentially done is put a 15-minute mid-blockbuster set-piece on the rack and stretched it out until its cartilage pops."

"Zahler has a way with action, and the set pieces are inventive and nasty, with an unflinching eye for violence."

"Dragged Across Concrete may be a hard movie to love, but it’s a much harder one not to respect and even admire"

"The tendency to undercut tension with fussy dialogue that continually draws attention to its cleverness make Zahler’s third feature a lot less fun than it seems to think it is."