Don't be fooled though--despite the title and poster, Brawl in Cell Block 99 has surprisingly little brawling involved. What it offers is something I'd argue is better: a character study, steeped into a slow-burning thriller like tea in hot water.
Bradley (Vince Vaughn) plays the proverbial tea bag who's dipped into the life of crime (again) when his clean-cut job as a tow-truck driver doesn't work out. Just when things seem to turn around for him, he takes a job to retrieve some drugs with the help of some Mexican dudes. It doesn't go well, and he goes to jail. But things only get worse when Bradley's pregnant wife (Jennifer Carpenter) is kidnapped. With their unborn baby held hostage, Bradley takes one more job while in prison--to dig deeper and deeper, into cell block 99, to kill a man.
Brawls do eventually break out as a means for Bradley to move from a state of minimum security to minimum freedom. The fights are indeed brutal and gory. Vince Vaughn is built like a brick outhouse, and after he smashes a car up with his bare hands, it's apparent from the first scene onward that he can take and deliver incredible pain. He delivers scenes that will make you flinch (seriously, that part with the guy's face--that can't be unseen).
And yet, for every ounce of brutality there is a balance of civil dialogue and orderly procedure. Even as the overall journey progresses into darker, more painful, more savage levels of prisonhood, the film toys with cordiality and kindness as a sort of give-and-take. And it's refreshing to see Bradley act mostly civil--he may be capable of horrific murder, but the story makes it clear that he's reluctant to push forward, and would rather remain an upstanding citizen. He becomes a good-natured all-American father figure worth appreciating and rooting for--characteristics that successfully achieve a good pathos and allow us to follow him on his bone-crunching rampage.
The film looks incredible as it is, thanks to its still, carefully-composed cinematography. Colors are de-saturated and filtered to paint each scene with sharp color palettes. As clean and precise as the editing is, the film achieves a Kubrickian style. Within these fantastically-detailed backdrops, the actors exercise impressive control and restraint in each of their roles. It's especially impressive from Vaughn, practically the film's centerpiece, in a performance that shows superb mastery over voice, inflection, action, and choreography. This is easily the best of his career. A pointed, nuanced script unifies the plot and character with some genuinely head-scratching themes that will invoke any number of political subtexts. If nothing else, I suspect this is a film meant to underscore the continual burial of American dreams and spirit under the crushing foot of authority and corruption.
The crawl to cell block 99 is a long and slow one, but the detailed emphasis on characterization, script, photography, and composition is enough to keep me hypnotized all the way to the outrageous (and abrupt) conclusion. There's certainly grit and gore painting this picture, but as a study on civility and savagery, there is impressive class and talent on display. It makes for a bitter but smooth flavor of movie, just the way I like it.
4/5
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