plug: Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017)

Vince Vaughn delivers the performance of his career in S. Craig Zahler’s cathartic, ultraviolet slow burn prisonsploitation genre flick.

Brawl in Cell Block 99 is the second film from director/novelist/musician S. Craig Zahler (Bone Tomahawk, Dragged Across Concrete) and a melodic, strangely meditative work of ultraviolent genre cinema. It’s a delightfully shocking slow-burn mix of prisonsploitation, Samurai/Western homage, Dante’s Inferno, and Bruce Lee’s Game of Death.

The film stars Vince Vaughn as a boxer-turned-drug runner who must battle his way through descending levels of prison as the fallout of a recent deal-gone-bad threatens the safety of his wife and unborn child.

Vaughn is an absolute force of fucking nature, and the primordial spirit he conjures for the film dominates every frame. His overwhelming stature and somehow-previously underutilized physicality are on full display, and he’s one helluva sight to behold.

There are some great supporting performances as well. My personal favorite is Don Johnson as a sadistic, cigarillo-smoking, man-in-black warden of a high-security prison. Real Lee Van Cleef-type shit.

The blunt lyricism of Zahler’s dialogue is present in every scene, and the story is tactically executed with a careful smattering of visually arresting setpieces and incredibly well-choreographed, well-performed fight sequences. Zahler shoots these scenes in a series of still, wide-angle shots that aren’t overly flashy, but no less gorgeous. They’re easy to follow and were clearly rehearsed with a lot of love for the material.

Brawl in Cell Block 99 is undoubtedly Zahler’s best work so far. It’s 100% riveting and twice as impressive, through and through — a pitch-perfect showcase for the director’s singular ability to stretch a simple, violent genre premise over a long, leisurely runtime without skipping a beat.