1st hour useless

Zahler used to be a novelist before directing. His movies show it. Very slow paced. Dialogue heavy. Characters just waxing about nothing before something random happens.

ASACWHITE,

"The 1st hour dragged on like it was 2 hours.pointless we could of known Vaughn and Gibson's back story in 10 minutes.scenes we're too long and pointless..."

I, for one, don't agree.
I found the first hour to be very satisfying myself, very well shot, and instrumental to my appreciation of the more action oriented portion of the narration. Also, I found the first hour's unwillingness to give into political correctness -without falling into the trap of provocation/transgression for the sheer sake of it- very refreshing. But to each his own.


"ending was predictable and I would never consider watching this movie again..."

Ending, predictable? Then I'll concede you are a smarter film watcher than I am...
I always feel like all of Zahler's film could go in any plausible direction at any moment (sometimes even on second viewing!), that nobody is ever safe, and that every character's moral decision is never a given: it never feels like a character's action is the mere product of the script's need to steer the narration towards a preordained conclusion, but rather the result of an internal intellectual/emotional process you can actually see the characters going through (largely thanks to the extended characterisation witnessed in the slower first parts of Zahler's films).


"...slow as molasses.carpenters character was pointless.donald Johnson was given 6 minutes screen time.3/4 of the movie was Vaughn Gibson in a car.garbage movie."

Interestingly, Michael Mann's 'Heat', now a film above all attempt at criticism, received very similar reviews back in '95: "drags forever until the cool shootout two-third into the film's running time. Some minor/short-lived characters introduced half-way through the film (i.e. Dennis Haysbert's character...)"
I doubt Dragged Across Concrete will ever achieve the same status, but both films have in common that they definitely take the path less trodden as far as similar genre fares go, and both have very relevant insights into the times they were made in.

I'm curious, what is your opinion of Heat?
Have you seen Zahler's other films (Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in Cell Block 99)? How do you feel about them?

they could have cut 20-25 minutes off.

Not useless per se, but it could have been edited to at least half the length with the same amount of substance.

The film does really pick up the pace with the bank robbery -
would it have been a hit with better editing though? I dunno - I feel like there was something missing in the story - they showed backstory of some robbers but not the others - that's too bad. I mean, they gave backstory to the chick who got killed within seconds of the bank robbery, but the bank robbers that lived till the end of the film got nothing, what's up with that? Finally, the ending.... I feel like it would have been better if the good guys (or semi-good guys - or at least one of them) lived through this ordeal. The action scenes, however, were brutal - so all in all, this film has plenty of negatives but also a few upsides. It's a fine mix of awesome combined with lame or simply mediocre stuff in a film that's too long due to poor editing.

All in all.... it's hard to give this a proper score. perhaps 60%?

Sure they could have made it short. Space Odyssey or Pulp Fiction could have been shorter too. But those films are generally considered among the best films of all time. So there is a market for yarn-like dialog or extended scenes that set a mood. Maybe you're just not into that kind of thing.

I for one loved the dialog, and practically every line/scene in the film. I found all the dialog to be believable and involving. I wouldn't have changed it.

I agree.

It should have been obvious that this was a slow burn buildup to bleak nihilistic violence & death but somehow i still managed to be caught a little off guard. The most disturbing sequence of the film with Jennifer Carpenter's character playing a new loving mother with crippling social anxiety, reluctantly urged to go into work by her husband all of which was meant to build an emotional connect between the character and the audience only to have her brutally murdered shortly after as she makes a hopeless plea about her baby was basically to say to the audience "Yep. It's that kind of film folks. Not for the faint of heart"