2017’s “Brawl in Cell Block 99”, written and directed by S.
Craig Zahler.
Starring Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Carpenter, Don Johnson, Udo
Kier, Marc Blucas, Dion Mucciacito, Victor Almanzar, Mustafa Shakir, and Willie
C. Carpenter.
What is it about?
“Brawl in Cell Block 99” is about a tow truck driver (Vince
Vaughn) whom is laid off from his job. He comes home to find his wife (Jennifer
Carpenter) cheating on him- and that’s before lunch. The couple make a plan to
stick it out, and try for a baby, while he works as a drug runner. Eventually a
drug deal goes bad, and Vaughn is tried in court. Sentenced to time in prison,
he is told that his pregnant wife has been kidnapped, and that he will have to
kill another prisoner in order for her and his baby not to be harmed. Will the
preferably pacifist Vaughn be able to save his unborn child and wife’s lives?
Why is it worth seeing?
Director S. Craig Zahler creates an homage to grindhouse
exploitation films that simultaneously takes it’s time, while marching forwards
at a breakneck pace. Once things get intense, it doesn’t let up, and every time
you think it’s hit it’s apex, it goes higher.
Zahler’s at times brutal pulp fest culminates in some of the
strongest work Vaughn has ever put forwards. Left for dead after a string of
uninspired romantic comedies, Vaughn brings more of the menace that he flirted
with so well in “True Detective: Season 2”. His Bradley (never Brad) character
has a moral code that never gets subverted, even when he’s performing cranium
rearrangements. He’s a family man who doesn’t seem to have nerve endings.
Zahler does a masterful job of taking a generous amount of
screen time and filling it with enough character to make do until the screen is
full of casual cartilage. Vaughn’s high wire quiet tension holds until arms
start breaking, and there is not a false note until things go all the way
right, and all the way wrong. One of the most fun yet grimmest movies of 2017,
Zahler has announced himself as an enduring talent to be reckoned with.
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