There’s a line in this film where someone says, “I’m in until I’m not,” and that more or less sums up my feelings on Craig Zahler’s Dragged Across Concrete. Much like the recent Destroyer, there’s a lot to love (literally a lot, as Concrete clocks in at over two-and-a-half hours), but it doesn’t quite stick the landing, which holds it back from being truly special.
Still, it’s got the best performance from Mel Gibson in quite some time, Vince Vaughn is nearly flawless as Gibson’s fellow detective, Tory Kittles shows off some range, and the rest of the cast is well up to the challenge.
Story-wise, it’s like a far bleaker Jackie Brown, but creatively I’d also compare it to Sorry to Bother You, in the sense of putting a lot of detail into a fictional world, and that both movies’ auteurs directed the films, wrote the screenplays, and co-wrote the music (though the reality of Sorry to Bother You is far more heightened).
I’ve not seen Craig Zahler’s other films, Bone Tomahawk and Brawl in Cell Block 99, but I knew going in that he has a propensity for grisly violence, which Concrete eventually gets to and will undoubtedly turn some people away, but in all honesty it wasn’t as much as I expected.
All-in-all, not a must-see theatrically, and not for everyone, but it’s a good slow-burn crime drama, if that’s your thing.
Rating: ★★★½ (out of five)
People generally see martial arts movies to see martial arts, and from that perspective you can’t say Triple Threat doesn’t deliver.
I mean, when you’ve got a film starring Tony Jaa (Ong-Bak), Iko Uwais (The Raid), and Tiger Chen (part of the Kung-Fu team from The Matrix trilogy), you know you’re going to see some high-quality (and high-flying) fight choreography, and that alone is worth the rental fee. In particular, I enjoyed how they handled strength relative to size, which a lot of other martial arts movies treat with videogame physics, but Triple Threat somehow made it feel more grounded.
Unfortunately, there’s not much else to latch onto in terms of the story or acting, which holds the movie back in terms of comparisons to other offerings in the genre, but hey, it’s a movie by fight fans for fight fans, so I’m not going to sit here and hate on it too much.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
I have to confess, I missed out on the zeitgeist of Jordan Peele’s previous offering, Get Out. I caught up with it eventually at home and wasn’t that impressed, but I felt a little guilty about judging it without getting the full experience, so I made sure I went to see Us opening night in a packed theater.
And, well, I still wasn’t that impressed.
I’ll admit that perhaps Peele uses a cinematic language that I just don’t understand, but my problem with Get Out was that it tried to combine concepts that just didn’t work together for me, and I have a similar issue with Us (though I can’t really get into it without spoilers).
Now, I will say that there is a lot of cleverness in the screenplay in terms of set-ups and pay-offs, I can’t not praise the film for that, but it’s all more for little things, and I just couldn’t find the ultimate point of what the movie was going for, which is frustrating.
One last thing I’ll say though is that if you do decide to see Us, do your best to not have any preconceived notions about it in your mind, because I did (thanks Twitter…), and I would say that also hampered my experience.
Rating: ★★½ (out of five)
