Dragged Across Concrete (2018)

Detective Brett Ridgeman (Mel Gibson) crouched on a fire escape outside a window when he heard someone coming up the metal steps.  It proved to be his partner, Anthony Lurasetti (Vince Vaughn).  They briefly bantered and noticed a nearby neighbor watching them.  Soon, they heard a knock, and the third cop was there to flush out the perp.  Sure enough, Vasquez crawled out the window only to find himself handcuffed and interrogated.  All seemed great but the neighbor filmed it and sent it to the news.  It didn't look good.  A six-week suspension followed.

Henry Johns (Tory Kittles) was fresh out of prison and found his mother turning tricks to pay the rent while his younger brother played computer games.  His pal, Biscuit (Michael Jai White), had a job.  Henry was willing but made sure to have some guns wrapped in cellophane.  "Why's that?" Biscuit wanted to know.  Sometimes, you don't have time to put on gloves.

Ridgeman lived in a bad neighborhood and his daughter was frequently harassed.  It was only a matter of time before she was of an age to get raped.  His wife was disabled.  He needed to score some money to get them out of the neighborhood.  He got a tip about a heist from a man who owed him.  Roping Lurasetti into the caper, the pair spent several days watching for Lorentz Vogelmann (Thomas Kretschmann).  Eventually, a pair of black men picked him up and drove off.  Brett and Tony followed.

The movie proves to be quite violent at times.  Vogelmann's goons, masked men in black who are differentiated only by the color of their gloves, proved to be killing machines.  When each is introduced, a couple of corpses are left in their wake.  At no point do they take off their masks.  Henry and Biscuit are brought into the crew as driver and spotter.  Of course, the suspended cops and the bank robbers will have a confrontation.

By the same man who wrote and directed Bone Tomahawk, the menace of the gloved men reminds one of the mysterious cannibal Indians from that movie.  Though Henry and Brett are the main characters, neither is particularly likable.  Brett is a cop who has gotten more jaded with each passing year, inured to inflicting violence on criminals.  Henry is a criminal, but he has a code of ethics.  He proves to be the best at seeing all the moving parts despite being relegated to a minor role.

Slow and plodding with moments of intense violence.  Meh.  Just okay.

Bone Tomahawk (2015)

A pair of bushwhackers flee from a posse and find themselves in a peculiar Indian burial ground.  There is eerie howling that doesn't sound natural.  Suddenly, one is shot in the throat and the other flees for his life.  Eleven days later, he finds himself in the town of Bright Hope.  His manner attracts the attention of Sheriff Hunt (Kurt Russell).  As he tries to run, Hunt shoots him in the leg.  With the town doctor drunk, Mrs. O'Dwyer (Lili Simmons) is summoned to the jail to extract the bullet.  By morning, the prisoner, the deputy, and Mrs. O'Dwyer are missing along with half a dozen horses.  The stable boy is dead.  An unusual arrow is found and a local Indian identifies it as belonging to troglodytes, a savage band of cannibals who reside in the Valley of Starving Men.  Sheriff Hunt, Deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins), John Brooder (Matthew Fox) and Arthur O'Dwyer (Patrick Wilson) set out to rescue the missing people.

Though the story has a horror element to it, it mostly plays as a standard western until the final act.  The four men who set our are not well-suited to the task.  O'Dwyer has a broken leg, the reason why he was still in town rather than herding cattle north to Wyoming with most of the town's other men.  Though urged to stay behind, he must try to rescue his wife.  Brooder is a dandy who kills without compunction and has a special dislike for Indians.  He is the best equipped of the group.  Sheriff Hunt is competent but has only nominal command over Brooder and O'Dwyer.  Chicory is an elderly fellow who talks endlessly, much to the irritation of his fellows.

As promised, the troglodytes are cannibals who speak by howling and keep their 'meals' alive until it's time to dine.  Their weapons are amazingly crude but lethal.  Of note, they use an animals jawbone as an axe, the titular bone tomahawk.

The movie has one particularly funny bit.  Brooder claims to be the smartest member of the posse.  When challenged on that by Chicory, he states that O'Dwyer and Hunt are married and Chicory is a widower.  So?  "Smart men don't get married."  QED.  :)

The movie is overlong and spends much of its time on the journey to the Valley of the Starving Men.  Though they encounter hazards along the way, it is never the troglodytes.  Imagine Aliens where three quarters of the movie is spent before the characters engage the aliens.  There is a lot of time spent on the interrelationships of the posse and not a lot of fighting the monsters.

Just okay.