Brawl in Cell Block 99 – first look review

Hav­ing wowed audi­ences with his out-of-nowhere hit Bone Tom­a­hawk in 2015, writer/​director S Craig Zahler roars back into town with this even blood­i­er fol­low-up, set large­ly inside the con­fines of the world’s grimmest prison – a pri­vate­ly run facil­i­ty called Red Leaf.

Vince Vaughn, known more as a comedic schmuck than a brute with a con­science, excels in the lead role as Bradley Thomas, a lum­ber­ing hulk of a man who los­es his job at the car work­shop, forc­ing him into a deliv­ery spot, drop­ping off ship­ments of drugs. Things haven’t been going well at home – his wife Lau­ren (Jen­nifer Car­pen­ter) admits to hav­ing an affair after their mis­car­riage – and the pressure’s on to make things right.

Which Bradley (not Brad, as he keeps point­ing out) suc­ceeds in doing remark­ably well – albeit at a price. Eigh­teen months lat­er, the cou­ple are liv­ing in a sprawl­ing sub­ur­ban pile, with Lau­ren again preg­nant, and Bradley get­ting paid a ton for each drop-off he car­ries out. That’s also when a fresh sup­pli­er rolls into town, and Bradley finds him­self part­nered up with a pair of Mex­i­can heav­ies who aren’t so good at fol­low­ing orders.

A messy police shoot-out ensues and after doing the right thing, Bradley is arrest­ed and sent down for sev­en years. To make mat­ters worse, the job gone wrong car­ries with it a heavy price tag, which Bradley must pay back – or else, risk the life of his wife and his unborn child.

Over the course of two-and-a-quar­ter hours, Bradley pro­ceeds to bash to smithereens whomev­er he needs to in order to resolve this dilem­ma. Heads are lit­er­al­ly pum­melled to a pulp with increas­ing, stom­ach-turn­ing reg­u­lar­i­ty, when the man of oth­er­wise con­trolled emo­tions sud­den­ly erupts. These vio­lent out­bursts play out slow­ly, with some dry humour (deliv­ered most­ly from the prison guards), although not on the lev­el of Zahler’s pre­vi­ous film. Among the wel­come sup­port­ing turns to savour: Don John­son (as a cig­ar-chomp­ing prison chief) and Udo Kier (as a sadis­tic henchman).

This is an intense, at times visu­al­ly sat­u­rat­ed view­ing expe­ri­ence that cer­tain­ly isn’t for the faint-heart­ed. It puls­es along nice­ly with a funk-and-soul sound­track in tow – this is a film made for guys who love their mus­cle cars – even if some judi­cious edit­ing could have helped with the drawn-out pac­ing (it feels long, no mat­ter how engag­ing it is). Vaughn seems to inhab­it this unusu­al­ly bru­tal role with sur­pris­ing ease and glee, per­haps in a con­scious effort to diver­si­fy away from his reg­u­lar stu­dio pap (2016’s Hack­saw Ridge notwith­stand­ing). Car­pen­ter isn’t called upon to do much in her sup­port­ing role (women are bla­tant­ly rel­e­gat­ed to near irrel­e­vance in the action here), while John­son and Kier make the most of their screen time, the lat­ter with his trade­mark zeal in abundance.

Some may find the immi­nent threat fac­ing Bradley’s wife and unborn child a lit­tle too much to take – it’s too unpleas­ant to spell out here – but with­out it, the stakes would not be high enough. Zahler’s pen­chant for this type of mate­r­i­al – he cites Sam Peck­in­pah, Don Siegel and Michael Win­ner among his key influ­ences – serves him well, pro­vid­ed one can han­dle some seri­ous­ly toe-curl­ing sequences that veer close to sadism. By its very nature, grind­house car­ries with it its own set of caveats, and this bru­tal and very well-exe­cut­ed film is no excep­tion. Avoid watch­ing around meal­times, then, and keep your loved ones close. This brawl is one hell of a blast.