Sometimes the most dangerous man in the room is the one with a moral compass.
All Bradley Thomas wanted to do was to maintain his job as an auto mechanic, come home to his loving wife, and find the milk with the good cream at the grocery store. He was a simple, low maintenance man who worked hard for his money and didn’t like to make a big show of it. He kept humble, stayed hungry, and didn’t like to interfere in any kind of businesses that wasn’t his own. That was the case, at least, until the fates challenged everything he stood for. Until the day they took his wife and his unborn baby away from him. Now, the man who would normally lower his head to the floor and keep quiet in the corner has raised his fists to the sky, furrowed his brow into a stern look of determination, and made good use of his brute strength. Some bad men took his family, but he’s out to get them back – even if he has to beat down every single man in this prison who dares to stand in his way.
It all started when he lost his job. The economy’s tough they said, and they need to make some cuts. Bradley – not Brad – doesn’t need to know all the pretty little details, just where to collect his check and when to clean out his locker. Upon returning home he finds his wife discreetly covering up a fresh hickey in her car, but that mark on her neck didn’t come from him. To Bradley, it’s just another man looking to take what’s his. It’s okay though, he’s gonna get his old job back running drugs for Gil, he and his wife Lauren will have a sweet little baby koala, and they’ll move into a brand new house and leave his life of destruction and unfulfilled dreams in their wake. It’s just too bad that not everyone is this cool-headed. For a while their plan works, their new house is beautiful, Lauren’s belly is getting bigger by the day, and it seems their tumultuous relationship is finally starting to sail steadily on calm waters. That’s about the time that Bradley’s next big drug deal goes horribly wrong, and he finds himself staring out at his glowing pregnant wife from behind prison bars.
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Bradley’s got seven years ahead of him in the big house, but he can handle that. Lauren will wait on him, and one day they will explain to the baby where her father’s been all this time. After all, it’s not like he could just stand there and allow his fellow drug runners gun down the cops like that. It might not have been his fault that their illegal activities ran amuck, but he’s an old-fashioned strong silent type with moral standing, and he just couldn’t stand by and let those degenerates murder innocent men in uniform just because they all happened to get caught. Bradley might be serving years in prison for saving the same men who placed him in the pen, but he knows he did the right thing, and that knowledge will carry him through the rougher years. However, the men on the inside have other plans for him. They’re not too happy about the fact that Bradley chose to protect the pigs over them, and now they want payback, meaning they need Bradley to kill another prisoner as penance for costing them millions. Either he kills the man they’re after, or they kill his wife and baby.
Little do they know what their little ultimatum has just unleashed.
The follow-up to his debut film Bone Tomahawk, director S. Craig Zahler comes out of the gates swinging with his utterly ravenous and insanely cool second film Brawl in Cell Block 99. Starring Vince Vaughn, who is a force to be reckoned with, this movie slowly builds the tension while we watch as Bradley Thomas has every little piece of his life stripped from him, bit by bit, until he’s left with no choice but to break arms and crush skulls and squash every opponent in this goddamn prison to get it all back again. Even the most agreeable man can only be pushed so far until he retaliates, and by the time this one reaches his breaking point, not only he but the audience, as well, is more than ready to exert some furious vengeance upon all who have wronged him. It’s admittedly thrilling to watch him get his revenge. Some of the stunts in this film are so absurdly outlandish and ridiculously violent that one can’t help but yelp and hoot and holler with each new body that Bradley leaves behind him on his path of destruction. With each blow, which is made all the more poignant by the absence of any sound except for the landing of Bradley’s vicious punches, the hysterical excitement level of the inevitable big brawl grows. He’s earned this anger, deserves this rage, and it is extremely fulfilling to watch him go nuts once he’s had enough. The shocking violence was definitely present in Zahler’s first film, but now, he’s capitalized upon his glorious tendency towards bloody violence, has learned how to make his audience happily squirm with delight, and the fight he brings to his latest picture plays like a pulsating rhythm that warms up hot under the viewer’s skin and sends shivers down one’s spine. By the time the end credits roll, it’s hard not to be filled with just as much adrenaline as Bradley unleashes onscreen.
However, wicked, bloody, sadistically fun violence isn’t the only thing that Brawl in Cell Block 99 has going for it – even though honestly, the film would be enough with that aspect alone. But still, Zahler doesn’t stop there. This movie has some shockingly insightful commentary about the judicial system installed in it as well. While the first act plays as a slow, steady build-up to the chaotic carnage that lies ahead, and the finale serves as a wildly exploitative reward for the audience’s patience, the second act plays out as a well-informed conversation about the treatment of men in prison, and how they are constantly taunted by the guards who were originally employed to serve as proper authoritative figures. Pushed to the brink daily, prisoners are nearly incited to violence by the same men who claim they are there to keep them all calm. It’s a backwards system that works to keep criminals in instead of working to better them so that they can get out, proving that it’s not just their peers who do damage on the inmates, but the wardens and the men in charge, as well, who inflict harm upon the men they have sworn to protect.
All in all, Brawl in Cell Block 99 is one hell of a film. Vince Vaughn is at the top of his game in a rare modern-day film about a man who can kill others easily, but chooses not to, because while he is certainly a man who is capable of physical violence, he is also a man of principle who just wants to live his life unbothered. In many ways, this film harkens back to the old-timey spaghetti westerns where a retired fighter is called upon to duel out some well-deserved bloody vengeance for the sake of vigilante justice. Zahler’s latest may not take place in the desert, and his characters may not wear cowboy hats, but this epic crime thriller is certainly in the same vein as his Kurt Russell-led predecessor, and both are more than worth your time.
