Feb 5

Feb 5 S. Craig Zahler's "Brawl In Cell Block 99"

Movie Review by Dennis D. McDonald

At one time a movie like this would have received a well-deserved ”X” rating for graphic violence. That was long ago in simpler times.

What we have here is a no-holds-barred violent and gory prison drama where an inmate is forced to perform violent and horrific acts to preserve the safety of his wife and unborn child on the outside.

Perversely, the movie comes across as an elongated morality play held together by a semi-logical sequence of events and anchored by an amazing performance by Vince Vaughn. Vaughn plays a retired boxer imprisoned for drug-running. From within prison he learns that his pregnant wife is being held hostage for his messing up the major drug deal that landed him in prison. He is told to kill an inmate in another maximum security prison in order to rescue her. He sets out on a rampage that gets him transferred to the maximum security prison which, lorded over by a cigar-smoking Don Johnson, is presented here as a lower circle of hell.

The movie starts slowly as we learn bits and pieces about Vaughn’s character’s back story and how he ends up in prison. His “code of honor” and “loyalty” are played on as dark forces work to mercilessly punish him and his pregnant wife. But he persists to a bone-crushing and logical conclusion with many bloody bodies along the way.

Some of the photography in this movie is odd. Scene framing outside the prison sequences seem static and photographed with inappropriate wide angle lenses. I can’t tell if this is intentional or due to a sparse equipment budget. Once we are behind prison walls, though, the increasingly hellish hallways and cellblock sets take over and we can almost smell what’s going on.

Vaughn inhabits his role. Recommended but NOT for the faint of heart.