Video Dispatches: THE MULE, DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE & BLAZE

Video Dispatches is a regular digest of recent home video releases.

The Mule (2018) – Warner Bros.

On the 10-minute making-of feature included on Warner’s Blu-ray of The Mule, Clint Eastwood’s 2018 film centering on a daylily grower-cum-drug mule, the director compares the film with Gran Torino, his 2008 feature wherein he also played a crank whose old-world norms are frequently upended by the changing world around him. As the director notes, both films are ultimately about the need to change, but The Mule finds Eastwood much more playful, both as an actor and filmmaker. And Earl Stone has turned a leaf that Walt Kowalski never got to — though helplessly out of touch, we see Earl willfully make concessions to his own ignorance, adopting new habits and language in an attempt to more properly adapt to his contemporary surroundings.

Also mentioned on the featurette, from a technical standpoint, is the short open-life of the aptly named daylily. Using them as Earl’s cultivation of choice proved a difficult obstacle for set designers. While Eastwood overtly uses the flower to illustrate Earl’s drive to dedicate himself to something beautiful and effort-rewarding — as long as it isn’t his own family — perhaps it was also chosen for its specifically short bloom. Earl finds himself at what is surely the last days of his life, trying to make the right changes and trying to wring some joy out of life before his window closes.

As mentioned, this is the second film of Eastwood’s to come out in calendar year 2018 along with the excellent The 15:17 to Paris. This pair of films, which found the 89-year-old director, much like Earl Stone, willing to change, experiment and play, will be one of the rarest achievements on American studio cinema’s soil for a handful of moons. While other aging US directors (e.g. Woody Allen) have become formalistically ossified and comfortable with stale ideas, it’s inspiring to see an old man who sees value in exploring a medium he’s been long acquainted with.

Dragged Across Concrete (2019) – Lionsgate

Late in March, S. Craig Zahler’s third feature, Dragged Across Concrete, was simultaneously released in cinemas, on VOD and on home video. In a time of dissolving market importance for home video releases and an inflated one for streaming availability, Lionsgate makes a strong case for the former with this Blu-ray.

The disc features two supplemental features: “Elements of a Crime,” a three-part documentary on the film’s making, and “Moral Conflict: Creating Cinema that Challenges.” It’s routine that if these standard new releases have any making-of featurettes, they’re a bit closer to the one on The Mule Blu-ray (which isn’t even bad by factory standards), which approximate press-junket interviews and talking head shots that are just extensions of the film’s press kit. But these two features go a long way to unpacking processes, choices, influences and attitudes behind the filmmakers.

I will say, in just about all of Zahler’s recent interviews and profiles, his attempt to build his own mythos as a modern maverick can get a bit tiresome, and that’s present in these supplements as well, but not entirely egregiously.

While talking at length about his casting choices, Zahler mentions that many of his actors, specifically Vince Vaughn, Tory Kittles and Don Johnson, are “comfortable doing very little.” The implications of this observation speak to what I find so appealing about the director’s third film. I approached Dragged Across Concrete with significant apprehension after being turned off by the pervasive ugliness of Brawl in Cell Block 99, but found myself incredibly in tune with Zahler’s distanced approach, stilted tone and damp cinematography this time out.

Zahler admits the film is divergent in style from his prior films, and him and cinematographer Benji Bakshi talk in depth about their choices particular to people and places, and delineate the rules they established for the film’s visual language, including no handheld photography and no camera movement unless it’s in lockstep with a character’s movement. Bakshi says that when rules like this — that are built on stillness — are systematically deployed, it can make an audience more emotionally invested in a specific kind of experience. Building off that idea, Zahler says he attempts to “make the cinematographic aspect as inconspicuous as possible.” This is the real power of Dragged Across Concrete, and I hope he and his collaborators follow this creative instinct going forward.

Blaze (2018) – Shout! Factory

Blaze, Ethan Hawke’s third fictional feature, was a bit of a critical darling, though even on a modest budget of $1 million, it failed to make much of a splash at the box office. But Hawke’s musical biopic, much like its subject matter, was never destined to reach a large audience. Adapted from Sybil Rosen’s memoir about her time with underground folk legend Blaze Foley, who also co-wrote the script with Hawke, Blaze has an unwieldy, rambling structure built from associative, non-linear editing that ties together three narratives, some more interesting than others.

However, the primary problem with Blaze is that its protagonist, rendered here by first-timer Ben Dickey, makes for quite a banal hero. Or rather, Dickey makes for a decidedly uncompelling screen presence. Thankfully, he’s surrounded by a mostly compelling supporting cast — Alia Shawkat does fine work here and, as a slowly disillusioned muse, contains the soul of the film.

Otherwise, it’s telling that the most vibrant portion of the film is during the group cameos from Richard Linklater, Steve Zahn and Sam Rockwell. I’m also mixed on Hawke’s chosen style of cinematography, done by Steve Cosens, which, while intermittently striking, more often conjures over-photoshopped wedding photography.

Fortunately, Shout has blessed the release of this mediocre film with a commentary track from Hawke, who might be one of Hollywood’s last great raconteurs. He’s one of those unusually charming types that can speak quixotically — which he does throughout the track — without ever sounding like the pretentious artist. Hawke’s commentary is a much more rewarding experience than the feature, with the brightest spots being when he opens up about particular influences and filmmaking lessons he’s learned.