By Ezra Stead
Dragged Across Concrete, Canada / USA, 2018
Written and Directed by S. Craig Zahler
The Highwaymen, USA, 2019
Directed by John Lee Hancock
It’s been a while since I attempted a double review, but these two recent movies have enough in common that I’ve found myself thinking of them both in the same “breath” fairly often since viewing them, and I certainly think there would be a significant overlap in their fans, if they manage to reach enough people to truly gain a fanbase (Dragged Across Concrete only played one week at a couple of theaters in New York City, and The Highwaymen has an – actually more advantageous for gaining viewership – almost exclusively online release on Netflix). They are both of the type of movies commonly (and usually unkindly) referred to as Dad Flicks, provided your dad is okay with some pretty harsh, abrupt violence. They each, in their own ways, evoke an earlier, more classical era of cinema – Dragged the mid-to-late ’70s, Highwaymen perhaps even earlier, to the new cinema of the late ’60s, i.e. the films of Sam Peckinpah from that era (as well, of course, as Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde). They are also two of the best movies I’ve seen so far this year.
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Filmed in Utah, the 1993 coming-of-age film The Sandlot wonderfully captures the summer of 1962 through the eyes of nine middle-school boys, and—in what was certainly a case of life imitating art—this cast of unknowns would later admit that the summer they spent filming this cinematic gem was, indeed, their favorite summer. Just like Simon Birch—another film involving an ill-fated baseball—this story opens with the voice of an adult narrator recalling one of the more memorable chapters from his youth. A good sports drama involves conflict, and the main pickle in this adventure stems from a stepfather’s prized baseball being knocked over the fence of the neighborhood sandlot that plays host to a summer-long baseball game. Normally, a 95-cent baseball would just be replaced, but this ball was autographed by the Sultan of Swat, Babe Ruth, and the neighboring yard is patrolled by a drooling monster of a dog known to the boys as “The Beast.” 
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