Entertainment Weekly by Chris Nashawaty

It’s a cliché to say that they don’t make movies like this anymore — nasty, nihilistic, nicotine-stained ‘70s death trips. But thank goodness that Zahler’s doing everything in his power to prove that cliché wrong.

Slant Magazine by Chuck Bowen

With his latest, S. Craig Zahler doubles down on the best and worst elements of the pulp film.

IndieWire by Michael Nordine

Dragged Across Concrete may be a hard movie to love, but it’s a much harder one not to respect and even admire.

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

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

CineVue by Alasdair Bayman

Dragged Across Concrete is a unique take on ultraviolence in an age whether the production of films is becoming increasingly polarising. Imbued with a particular stand out performance by Gibson breathes life into Zahler’s mature approach to genre filmmaking.

Austin Chronicle by Richard Whittaker

Dragged Across Concrete is a nihilist's morality tale. In the end, Zahler suggests, there's the dead, the innocent, and those smart enough to know that running is the only path out; and even then, there's a lot of innocence on that pile of corpses.

The A.V. Club by A.A. Dowd

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.

RogerEbert.com by Brian Tallerico

The result is a film that often feels like Zahler’s most assured to date. Self-indulgent? Oh yeah. A provocation? You bet. But 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.

Variety by Guy Lodge

At a whopping 158 minutes, “Concrete’s” sleek, languorous anatomy of a heist represents the filmmaker’s most extreme exercise yet in painstaking genre deceleration, sparked as ever by the tangy movie-movie vernacular of his writing, the crunchy metal-on-asphalt dynamism of his craftsmanship, and the back-from-the-brink reanimation of his stars.

Rolling Stone by David Fear

Dragged Across Concrete is apt to send crime-film fanatics, especially ones who prefer their pulp nasty, brutish and incredibly long, into frothing fits of glee. For other folks, the title will double as an apt description experience of watching it.

The Film Stage by Leonardo Goi

Where the new entry lacks in bloodshed and bone-splintering violence, it still confirms Zahler’s penchant for complicated characters, and conjures up a bad cops action movie which, despite blips in tension and a second half far superior to the first, crystallizes Zahler’s as a key name to watch for lovers of the genre.

Washington Post by Pat Padua

Dragged Across Concrete may not be the kind of movie you’d expect to emerge from such inspiration, yet the impassioned energy of those composers is echoed in Zahler’s feverish yet stubbornly patient approach to storytelling.

Screen Daily by Demetrios Matheou

Anyone expecting a progression in Zahler’s work may be disappointed, as the amusingly mannered dialogue starts to feel self-conscious and forced, as does the fatalism.

Film Threat by Alan Ng

This film barely gets a recommendation only because it finally gets interesting at the end.

The Telegraph by Robbie Collin

Even when the heist gets underway, the film takes its time about everything: what Zahler has essentially done is put a 15-minute mid-blockbuster set-piece on the rack and stretched it out until its cartilage pops. The duration is part of the point – you can’t do gnawing fatalism in a hurry – but the repetitions and languors here can feel presumptuous.

Screen International by Demetrios Matheou

Anyone expecting a progression in Zahler’s work may be disappointed, as the amusingly mannered dialogue starts to feel self-conscious and forced, as does the fatalism.

The Guardian by Damon Wise

Zahler has a way with action, and the set pieces are inventive and nasty, with an unflinching eye for violence. Such style and confidence is impressive. But after three movies, his increasingly morose characters’ world-weariness is becoming wearying in itself; a little more light and shade here and there would easily take this cult director to the next level. That is, if he wants to go.

The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney

The insanely self-indulgent running time of two hours and 40 minutes and the tendency to undercut tension with fussy dialogue that continually draws attention to its cleverness make Zahler’s third feature a lot less fun than it seems to think it is.

CineVue by John Bleasdale

The trademark brutal violence remains effective, and Zahler maintains a pervasive feeling of dread throughout his films, but Dragged Across Concrete shows the limits of taking the game long.