Dragged Across Concrete movie reviews round up: 'VERY VIOLENT' but WORTH seeing

Dragged Across Concrete tells the story of “two overzealous cops. “When they get suspended from the force, they must delve into the criminal underworld to get their proper compensation.” The movie debuted in UK cinemas on April 19, 2019 and is playing now.

What do critics say about Dragged Across Concrete?

Dragged Across Concrete has a respectable 73 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes.

The critics’ consensus reads: “As grim and grinding as its title, Dragged Across Concrete opts for slow-burning drama instead of high-speed thrills — and has just the right cast to make it work.”

Metacritic gives the movie 63 based on 14 positive reviews, 11 mixed, and one negative.

Hannah Woodhead for Little White Lies:

Unrelenting, glib and actually quite intelligent beneath the guts and gore.

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Peter Bradshaw for the Guardian:

This is a long film, but there is something so horribly compelling about its unhurried slouch towards the precipice.

Chris Nashawaty for Entertainment Weekly:

You never get the sense that Zahler’s endorsing his ugly characters’ brutal behaviour so much as acknowledging that it exists and is worth looking at even if you have to avert your gaze.

Richard Roeper for the Chicago Sun-Times:

Dragged Across Concrete is an admittedly distinctive but ultimately mediocre movie that provides far more empty calories of exploitation than genuine food for thought.

David Edelstein for New York Magazine/Vulture:

For all the absurdist-tragic trappings… this is still your basic boneheaded, right-wing action movie – skewed so that its heroes’ moral relativism is meant to be a sign of their manly integrity.

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Todd Gilchrist for TheWrap:

Zahler’s filmmaking feels like the cinematic equivalent of “I’m not racist – my black friend says so,” filling in supporting roles with black and Latino actors who are either reduced to stereotypes or just plain mistreated. Sometimes both.

Brian Tallerico for RogerEbert.com:

It’s difficult to ignore the craftsmanship and performances in Dragged Across Concrete simply because you don’t like some of its darker themes or feel like it’s too long.

David Fear for Rolling Stone:

It’s apt to send crime-film fanatics who prefer their pulp nasty, brutish and incredibly long into fits of glee.

For others, the title doubles as an apt description of the experience of watching it.

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Justin Chang for the Los Angeles Times:

Zahler only really grips you, alas, with his trademark ferocious displays of violence, which felt like a logical endgame in “Bone Tomahawk” and “Brawl in Cell Block 99,” but too often smack here of pointless sadism.

Manohla Dargis for the New York Times:

The movie is generally watchable, even at its slowest and ugliest, simply because the actors are solid even when their characters are repellent.

Richard Brody for The New Yorker:

There’s no shortage of significant works of art in which characters voice repellent ideas and do repellent things that, however, are distinguished artistically from the artist’s own point of view. This isn’t one of them.

A.A. Dowd for the AV Club:

This is an ugly, borderline vile piece of work. Thing is, it’s also been made with craft, wit, and a frankly exhilarating disregard for how films like this are supposed to operate, how they usually sound and move.

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Pat Padua for the Washington Post:

Yet this is no ordinary crime drama. What makes “Concrete” so strange – and, at times, frustrating – are its unexpected plot turns: seeming detours that inevitably lead us straight back to the story’s black heart.

David Sexton for the London Evening Standard:

Zahler is not subtle but he is bludgeoningly effective.

Glenn Kenny for the RogerEbert.com:

Potentially one of the most engrossing 158-minute films you’ll ever sit through.

Dragged Across Concrete is now playing in cinemas.