Movies You Might Have Missed: Brawl in Cell Block 99

S Craig Zahler’s action movie is one of the most wildly entertaining pictures of recent years

Many think Vince Vaughn has something of a punchable face so it’s good to see him put it to good use in a performance which oozes commitment

Action films, like Vince Vaughn, are not universally adored. As with most genre fare, one has to sift through a fair amount of unwatchable dross to happen upon something truly special.

Brawl in Cell Block 99, released just last year, screened out of competition at the Venice International Film Festival and opened at just a handful of cinemas in this country despite the popularity of Bone Tomahawk, an earlier work by its director S Craig Zahler. The title and prosthetic effects are clearly designed to evoke the grindhouse exploitation films of the 1970s but this is no mere homage; it is one of the most wildly entertaining pictures of recent years.

Vaughn stars as Bradley Thomas, a former boxer who loses his job and discovers his wife, Lauren (Jennifer Carpenter), is having an affair within the first few minutes of the film. Overcome with rage, he destroys her car with his bare hands (a stunt the actor actually performed himself since the parts were set up in a way that would avoid serious injury).

Bradley proceeds to forgive his other half and return to his previous employment as a drug mule. Eighteen months later and all seems to be well until a job goes wrong and our antihero is sentenced to seven years in prison. Once in prison, all hell breaks loose when Bradley’s pregnant wife is kidnapped and her safety along with that of their unborn child is threatened unless Bradley can somehow get himself moved to the maximum-security prison nearby to assassinate an inmate. From that point, it’s safe to say things get somewhat out of hand.

Zahler actually wrote this before Bone Tomahawk despite filming it after. It is not for the faint-hearted and the cartoonish violence will repel some viewers. The stakes, however, are so high that one cannot help but root for Bradley and Zahler paces the film beautifully so that the action sequences, when they arrive, feel entirely apposite.

Vaughn is a revelation in a role for which he put on 15lbs of muscle and trained as a boxer for a number of months. In some of his comedy work, the actor’s smugness has led some to feel he has something of a punchable face so it’s good to see him put it to good use in a performance which oozes commitment.

This isn’t for everyone but it is easy to imagine that Brawl in Cell Block 99, though it struggled at the box office, will become a cult favourite as the years go by.