Dragged Across Concrete

The dialogue has a nicely off-kilter feel.

Dirty, angry, and it feels like it wants to pick a fight with you.

Dragged Across Concrete feels like you're dangling on the end of a meat hook. It's painful and tense and at the same time, a little ridiculous... Even then, it's full of surprises, and riches for those who like it darker.

Despite a running time (more than two and a half hours) that would normally seem excessive for this kind of movie, Dragged Across Concrete is never boring.

You look back and you pinpoint things that don't belong, adding or detracting...feels like wasted baggage. But this film challenges critics, and challenging audiences, and that's far more interesting than a filmmaker playing it safe.

What makes the film, which clocks in at 159 minutes, seem less calculating and cynical is the way that slow buildup is steeped in a melancholy that never lets up even through the subsequent violence.

It's gritty thriller that's as tough as its title.

While it's certainly not a pleasant watch thanks to its brutal violence and bloated runtime, the murkiness merits discussion and deliberation.

You simply can never know what is going to happen next in Zahler’s pulp-fiction exploitation tale that is a brutal, uncompromising, unapologetic, and often repugnant journey that is compulsively watchable.

Throughout its two-hour-and-forty-minute runtime, I found myself alternating between feelings of disgust over how one might perceive these situations and feeling enrapt by the forceful way Zahler tells his story.