<em>Dragged Across Concrete</em> and the Sloppy Provocations of S. Craig Zahler
Dragged Across Concrete, S. Craig Zahler’s new film about two hard-nosed cops who descend into a criminal underworld, begins with a drug bust that goes too far. The detectives, Brett Ridgeman (played by Mel Gibson) and Anthony Lurasetti (Vince Vaughn), dispense excessive force with casual aloofness. In an early scene, one of them puts his foot on a suspect’s head to hold him still, and the other mocks the suspect’s Latina girlfriend by saying that her accent “sounds like a dolphin.” Soon after making the arrest, the officers are hauled before their boss, Lieutenant Calvert (Don Johnson), who starts by chewing them out and telling them that they’ve been suspended. But then the conversation shifts.
“Like cellphones, and just as annoying, politics are everywhere. Being branded a racist in today’s public forum is like being accused of communism in the ’50s,” Calvert muses. “Whether it’s a possibly offensive remark made in a private
