MovieChat Forums > Dragged Across Concrete (2019) Discussion > Hm, quite the suprising and strange flic...

Hm, quite the suprising and strange flick......

posted 4 years ago by [deleted]
8 replies | jump to latest

This was one strange flick. While watching it I was constantly surprised and perplexed.

Sadly, with sites like these, there are too many people that want to automatically assign any flick into some sort of proper slot and if it does not fit, then the film is either a bore or failure.

I would really like to read a few interviews with the director about this flick. This movie simply does not fit into any sort of criteria or genre - it's a serious drama, with comedic undertones. It's a buddy cop flick, but not. It's a gangster flick, but not totally. It's an action flick but moves at a slowly revealing pace. It is also similar in ways to a Cohen flick.

There was some really good dialog and some excellent back and forth between characters (I loved the sequence between Gibson, Vaughn, and Johnson).

Then there is the dialog throughout the flick (I kept wondering if David Mamet might have had a role in the screenplay with the unique dialog).

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

Given it didn't know what kind of a film it was trying to be I can't help but wonder if there were too many cooks making the cake. I could imagine the director wanted one type of a movie but the one producer wanted another type, maybe someone else has a completely different idea and so they crammed all their ideas into it... maybe they figured they could cut what didn't work out but somewhere along the line they just left everything in.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

I'm sort of like you and the cooks in the kitchen. I wonder if maybe Gibson played a large role in that, too. It's like there is a really good movie in here but something knocked it off track. Which is kind of surprising because the director's other movies are pretty good.

[–] cyguration (3951) 4 years ago

I don't know....

I think about this movie a lot... sometimes when it doesn't really call for it. But it's such a striking film with some really poignant imagery at points (which is weird because as everyone already knows, it moves much slower and has far fewer action scenes and gore than Zahler's Brawl Cell Block 99).

When we think about a movie going "off track" we have to think about what it was when it was "on track", and what could be done to have either kept it there or to move it along properly without winding or swerving off-course.

But in this case, I don't think there's anything I would have changed about this film.

Vaughn's death is one of those things where you retrospectively think about how it could have been avoided, but then it's just the way things unfold when you frolic in the devil's playground.

I know the biggest criticism is that it's "too long; too boring" but its methodical pace is what kept me hooked on what was going to happen next and constantly trying to figure out how it all fit together. The reveals, twists, and turns were all well done, too, because I didn't see them coming, which is hard to do in this day and age when we've seen everything under the sun coming a mile away.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

I think the fact that it is so long is more evidence it was a movie trying to please several different people. I mean it's almost 2 hours and 40 minutes long... that's probably an extra hour from where you would expect a movie to be. A part of me is almost timed to try to re edit to an hour and a half and see if flows better that way. Only question is what would be the real direction of it if you lopped off an hour.

[–] cyguration (3951) 4 years ago

Only question is what would be the real direction of it if you lopped off and hour.

I, too, came to the same conclusion. If you took out an hour what do you sacrifice and to tell what kind of story?

I feel like all of the Vince Vaughn and Mel Gibson stuff was necessary to build character and connections, so that when things inevitably went bad you understood why and how and had empathy for the characters.

You couldn't cut out anything related to Henry and his partner, otherwise you have a climax that doesn't make sense why minor characters would become major characters.

If you cut out all of the stuff surrounding the robberies of the villains planning to rob the bank, then you lose a lot of story-related plot points that explains how they pulled off what they did and the extreme lengths they go to when doing a job.

To me, each piece fits in well with what's there. And when compared to most other foreign crime dramas, the length isn't too bad (especially measured against India's films and various Danish, Swedish, and French films).

I think it's just one of those movies that sits in that odd place of being a niche crime thriller that appeals to a certain kind of filmgoer, which isn't bad if you're into that sort of thing.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

Yeah... I think while it would have been a better film if they pushed the villains to the side, I think you would need to have some additional scenes shot so that you could explain things that were critical to the story but were lost without the screen time of the villains.

[–] wiiztec (258) 2 years ago

Why is everyone so backwards about this? The fact is longer movies are generally better, I really wish people would realize that so I would not have to hear constant bitching about movie lengths

[–] cyguration (3951) 2 years ago

Yup, you're mostly correct.

Although, some films are long and drone on and don't really have anything to say or show. Sadly, I found the original Stalker way too long, and a lot of it was just scenes with nothing being said and shots of the environment, or water, or nothing really. In that case, the film was long just to be long, unless I was missing something important in between?