Directed by:
S. Craig ZahlerScreenplay:
S. Craig ZahlerCinematography:
Benji BakshiCast:
Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Carpenter, Don Johnson, Udo Kier, Geno Segers, Dion Mucciacito, Fred Melamed, Rob Morgan, Tom Guiry, Marc Blucas, Dan Amboyer, Pooja Kumar (more)VOD (1)
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When former boxer (Vince Vaughn) loses his job and is faced with the breakdown of his marriage, he decides to take a job as a drug courier to turn his fortunes around and provide a comfortable life for his wife Lauren (Jennifer Carpenter). Just as his situation begins to improve, a savage gunfight lands Bradley in jail where he has to make a series of impossible, chilling decisions to protect those he holds dear. Backed into a corner, Bradley now finds himself forced to commit ever more ferocious acts of violence across a vicious prison battleground on the path to the most dangerous confinement of all - Cell Block 99. (Universal Pictures UK)
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Reviews (16)
The content of the film looks so bland, uninteresting, videotape-like... but the name of the director and screenwriter practically guarantees that it won't be a bland, uninteresting, videotape spectacle. And it's not. It's a powerful, dark, and very brutal story about a man determined to take justice into his own shackled hands, and Vince Vaughn is absolutely brilliant in the lead role, largely because he's not just a muscular brawler, but also a good actor, BiCB99 impressed me so much. I had no problem understanding Vaughn's character, his motivations were clear and I really liked how he doesn't hesitate but takes action immediately, doing absolutely horrible things that made me have to look away more than once, but he does them because he doesn't have time to think of anything else and probably doesn't enjoy it much either. I would never have guessed the film was over two hours long.
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Brawl in Cell Block 99 offers up a new definition of brutality in the field of cinema that affects and changes pop culture trends. It is an alternative form of superhero worlds with a guy who became an alpha avenger against his will, escalating with increasing violence and progressing into an almost surrealist depiction of contemporary prison environments. There is still some sense of social apathy (I refer to Bone Tomahawk), but this time there is a good intention behind all that straightforward brutality. An intention to protect. It’s like the darkest side of the poetic Drive but ten times more intense; two hours of rushing headlong into the deepest pits of hell. Vince Vaughn stars in the role of his life, for which he should be damn grateful to the director Zahler. But it is too minimalist to get an Oscar. Don Johnson might get a nomination for savoring a delicious comeback in his role of a sadistic warden, though. The climax put me into the same euphoric state of watching Pulp Fiction for the first time. Brawl is the film of the year, at least for all Tarantino lovers and fans of original visions of the underworld and crime. [Sitges FF]
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Just another, regular day. You come home from work early and you find out that some jerk is sleeping with your wife. But you don’t go and rip his head off. No, you deal with it like a man and you try to rebuild the relationship and life you had before. But that requires time and money, so you start smuggling drugs… Brawl in Cell Block 99 stands mainly on Vince Vaughn’s minimalist performance (you’ll forget he ever played in comedies) and Zahler’s uncompromising approach to violence. The screenplay about Mr. Thomas and his journey taking him from prison to prison is full of broken limbs, stinking toilets and torture of all kinds. Since Bone Tomahawk, Zahler has improved his dramaturgic approach and the story has a much more consistent feel about it. The fantastic atmosphere where some scenes will make you want to barf, but you can’t tear your eyes from the screen is very special. Original.
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A huge surprise for me personally. The director S. Craig Zahler has already proven to me with the movie Bone Tomahawk this year that he has some potential, but I really had no idea that Vince Vaughn would convince me after his bad performance in True Detective. A very decent revenge film, which takes place in numerous locations, but even though we see the prison most of the time, you can’t say it is a prison drama. On the contrary. Imagine a simple PC game with a clear target in the beginning and you go through the first, second, third, fourth level… to finally get to the final boss. This film is that simple. Simple, but harsh, uncompromising and mainly the quality is really good. You will realize that in the fighting scenes. And you will also realize that Vince has a gift which he has never shown in all of his comedies so far. Why? That’s a good question. Now I hope that he will have a chance to film better and more interesting films than those he’s done so far.
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Zahler really is great at writing both screenplays and books. That's why it's unexpectedly strange that this time he's writing betrays him. While the first half (and especially the prologue) is slow but not too slow time to support the motivations and to trigger the rage thriving inside Bradley "Hulk" Thomas, the second will ruin everything as soon as the system is entered. The characters in it are flat and almost unintentionally ridiculous. There is lack of action (which is not wrong), but it´s sloppy slow (which is wrong), the plot is completely absent, the locations of prisons are convincing, probably in the same was as promises during the election campaign. Instead of a straightforward strike (benefiting from Bradley's consistently constructed motivation), the movie starts to rely on absurd slowness. However, not in terms of style, which would build the tension of silence before the storm or pay attention to the characters, but superfluous, because it should have ended by tens of minutes earlier in the editing room. And the more is Vaughn being respectful in his initial civilian "d'Onofrio's" position, the less he fits in the subsequent jailbird position of a puncher acting in appaling style of Michael "Bronson" Peterson. Just another average grindhouse that takes advantage of the fact that there has not been any serious one in a long time.
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