![]() So Zahler presents us with a black young man and a white old man who are both going to commit crimes to change their luck. Henry Johns ( Tory Kittles) comes home to find his addicted mother has been working as a prostitute to make ends meet, and he too is going to change his predicament. Meanwhile, Zahler introduces us to another iconic character from the potboiler genre-the ex-con jumping from being behind bars to the criminal assignment. He then gets a tip about a money exchange that he can rob, which means retirement and moving his wife and daughter to a safer neighborhood. ![]() Ridgeman believes that he’s at a point where stopping the drug trade doesn’t matter as much as doing it in a PC way, so he’s going to stop playing by the rules. Zahler is working a classical road here narratively-a man who feels cheated by life and goes to extremes to correct the bad hand he’s been dealt-but he’s lined that road with hot topic land mines. Zahler’s provocations continue in a scene that follows in which Ridgeman’s wife ( Laurie Holden) talks about how she was once a liberal but the crime in their heavily black neighborhood has made her racist. Does Zahler agree that political correctness is hampering police work? Is he presenting or endorsing? He’s tantalizingly vague even as Lurasetti proclaims he’s not racist because he orders dark roast on MLK Day. Their bad behavior is filmed by a neighbor, which leads to a suspension and an incendiary scene in which Gibson, Vaughn, and their chief (played by Don Johnson) discuss the PC state of the world. In their opening scene, Ridgeman gets a little rough and a little racist as he and his partner Anthony Lurasetti ( Vince Vaughn) are working a drug bust. Gibson does his best film work in years as Brett Ridgeman, a cop on the cusp of his 60 th birthday and perpetually scowling. And yet Zahler and Gibson don’t lean into that aspect as much as you may expect. Casting Mel Gibson as a kinda racist cop who longs for the days before political correctness is clearly a provocation in and of itself.
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