According to Variety, Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn have signed on to star in Dragged Across Concrete, “a crime thriller about police brutality” directed by Bone Tomahawk‘s S. Craig Zahler. Now, both Gibson and Vaughn can easily pull off the sort of asshole swagger that an excessively brutal police officer would have, and Bone Tomahawk was reasonably well-received, so there is a chance that this could be a film that treats a hot-button issue like police brutality with the level of respect that it requires.
Unfortunately, the synopsis doesn’t make it sound like that’s going to happen. Here’s how Variety puts it:
Gibson and Vaughn will play cops who are suspended when a video of their strong-arm tactics gets wide attention. They then descend into the criminal underworld to exact vengeance.
Based on that phrasing, it sounds like Gibson and Vaughn use excessive force on a suspect and get in trouble, but it’s very unclear who they’re getting vengeance on. Is it whatever criminals they strong-armed in the first place? Or is it whoever exposed the video of them doing the strong-arming? Either way, it seems like it’s going to position police brutality as a good thing (or at least a necessary evil), which is about as absurd and inexplicable as the recent career resurgence that Mel Gibson has been enjoying lately.