This week on Fabulous Film and Friends I’m both chasing butterflies and swatting at hornets whilst forcing my friends to watch and analyze the films of director S. Craig Zahler a filmmaker who couldn’t have a more awkward professional name than if he had gone with "E. Marvin Bummington."
But are his films worth discussing?
We’re talking 2015’s Bone Tomahawk starring the mighty Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Richard Jenkins, Matthew Fox, David Arquette, Lili Simmons, Fred Melamed, Kathryn Morris, Geno Segers and in a pair of blink and you’ll miss ‘em cameos: Sean Young and Michael Paré then 2017’s Brawl in Cell Block 99 starring Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Carpenter, Udo Kier, Marc Blucas, Geno Segers, Dion Mucciato and Don Johnson and finally Dragged Across Concrete which came out somewhere in 2019 and stars Mel Gibson, Tory Kettles, Michael Jai White, Thomas Kretschmann and “the S. Craig Zahler traveling players” who include Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Carpenter, Fred Melamed, Udo Kier and Don Johnson.
My guests today are my go-to series regulars who are the only pair I know who have the slightest interest in joining me in this flight of fancy, Roseanne Caputi and Alex Robertson.
Okay before we wander outside of town onto the deadly trail: the synopses:
In Bone Tomahawk, a murderous outlaw unwittingly leads a band of cannibalistic savages into a peaceful western town where the brutes kidnap the jailed outlaw, a deputy and the town’s doctor who is also the wife of Arthur, a local rancher. Despite an injured leg, Arthur joins a rescue party with Sheriff Hunt, Hunt’s old deputy Chicory, and a mysterious dandy cum gunslinger named Brooder. With Arthur’s injury slowing them down, the four brave men follow the savage’s path to hellish territory where they come face-to-face with unimaginable horrors that test both the team’s courage and sanity.
Brawl in Cell Block 99 tells the tale of Bradley Thomas who, in one day , is fired from his job and learns his wife is having an affair. He decides the only way to salvage his marriage is to go full time into drug smuggling to make the real money. A year later all is well: Bradley has a big house and his wife is pregnant but he goes in on a shady deal with some sleazy cartel types and it all goes south, forcing Bradley to choose between killing cops and killing cartel members. He chooses the latter but still ends up with in a five year prison sentence in a minimum security prison. Seems it is what it is until a messenger from the cartel comes to visit Bradley on his second day in the cooler and tells him that if he doesn’t get transferred to the maximum-security prison in order to kill a high value target in Cell Block 99 that his wife and unborn child will be murdered. Bradley dutifully and mercilessly follows their orders to save his family until he realizes all may not be what it seems.
In Dragged Across Concrete, unorthodox and vaguely shady take-no-prisoners cops, Brett Ridgeman and Anthony Lurasetti, are suspended for use of excessive force and use their unpaid leave to plan a heist. Unfortunately, their plot leads to witnessing a deadly bank robbery committed by a vicious and amoral trio of crooks led by Lorentz Vogelmann, who hired street thugs Henry Johns and Biscuit to be part of their team. With a dire hostage situation on their hands and after witnessing several murders, Henry and Biscuit begin to suspect that their hours are numbered as part of Vogelmann’s crew. At the same time, Ridgeman and Lurassetti are the only ones who have tailed the gang to their getaway hideout and are the only pair who can make a difference. The two forces meet up in the proverbial abandoned warehouse and chaos ensues.
How do the films stack up?