Bone Tomahawk-guy wonders whether his aesthetic might be applied to the seventies crime thriller. Charley Varrick by way of Dead Presidents
I had the cold last week and watched Paddington 2* to make myself feel better, so I thought I'd balance that out with Dragged Across Concrete, a casually, shockingly violent film that makes the ballistic projectile injuries of Starship Troopers look documentary in tone.
Characters say and do vile things without comment from the filmmaker, which feels like an endorsement, but watching the film all the way to the end doesn't leave you with that impression. Zahler shows you what his characters do but isn't interested in telling you how he feels about that.
This is a crime thriller with a shoot-out as its centrepiece, but there's more character work going on here than in Best Picture nominees. One minor player gets a length of backstory devoted to her that's the best example of the old horror dictum of getting to know someone so that when they get popped it has real effect that I've seen since Aliens (1986).
* I managed to make it all the way to the end without greetin', but when everyone clubs together to fly Aunt Lucy over and he buries his beaming face in her old lady overcoat ... you'd have to be deid!