Brawl In Cell Block 99, 2017.
Directed by S. Craig Zahler.
Starring Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Carpenter, Don Johnson, Udo Kier and Marc Blucas.
SYNOPSIS:
After losing his job, a former boxer starts working for a local drug dealer. When a deal goes sour, he’s held responsible by the cartel involved and can’t escape them when he goes to jail. His wife is under threat if he doesn’t track down another prisoner in a maximum security establishment. And he’s in the notorious Cell Block 99.
The king of the affable layabouts is no more. Vince Vaughn is going through his own Vaughnaissance and he’s taking it seriously. For those that watched it, it all seems to have started with season two of TV’s True Detective: then came his supporting role in Hacksaw Ridge, where he was unexpectedly impressive and now, thanks to Bone Tomahawk director Craig Zahler, he’s produced what is easily the best performance of his career.
Zahler’s previous offering was a horror western mash-up and he’s stuck with the horror for this one, mixing it with some dark humour and more than a few nods towards the B movie tradition. It’s also gruesome and brutally good, something of a slow burner with the first half of the film concentrating on how Vaughn’s Bradley (please don’t call him Brad) ended up in jail.
His work for a local drug dealer has proved to be a nice little earner, allowing him and his pregnant wife, Lauren (Jennifer Carpenter) to move into a nice house. It also allows us to understand his character, and it’s one with two very distinct sides. That cross tattooed on the back of his totally bald head is one side: it’s dark and violent, as we soon see when he takes his anger out on his wife’s car. But when we’re shown his face, he is clearly rational and articulate with a nice line in epithets.
The title leads you to believe this will be a prison riot movie, but it’s not – not in the traditional sense, anyway. Calling what happens in the last 20 minutes of the film a “brawl” is putting it mildly: it’s savage, bloody, brutal and gruesomely entertaining. And a natural extension of the strength that Bradley put into destroying his wife’s car, skull crushing included. It also boasts some profoundly stomach churning sound effects: we’re given a taste of what’s to come when a prison guard has his arm broken, complete with a wince making crunch. It’s the first of many.
The Cell Block 99 of the title is located in a maximum security prison – or, as oily, cigar smoking warden Don Johnson describes it “minimum freedom”. Bradley’s first prison experience, in a medium security establishment, isn’t much fun, but it’s reasonably civilised. When he’s transferred to the tender care of warden Johnson, things take a very gothic turn, with the warders dressed in black, a chamber of horrors and tunnels straight out of The Man In The Iron Mask. It’s all teeth grindingly nasty, but it never stops being compelling.
And that carries right on through to the final image, which is straight out of a B horror movie and it will stick in your head for ages. Even if it does make you wince. And it will. You’ll never look at Vince Vaughn in quite the same way again. The wedding crasher is now a bone crusher.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Freda Cooper. Follow me on Twitter.
Originally published October 16, 2017. Updated April 11, 2018.
