3 out of 5

Directed by: S. Craig Zahler

It’s lacking in the character grounding of Bone Tomahawk that made its final sequences such gut punches, but that’s okay: with Brawl in Cell Block 99, if the title isn’t already an indication, director S. Craig Zahler is going full exploitation.  And jesus does he succeed.  Interesting, though, despite my opening criticism, he doesn’t affect this by just going for the throat: at over a two hour runtime, this is slowburn stuff, completely restrained until it starts throwing its face-hitting punches in its final act.  I looked at that movie length, initially, with a little ho-hum reticence: did I want to wallow in this kind of stuff for that long?  But the flick veritably flew by.  It’s flawed, sure, but its executed with goddamned intention that keeps you riveted.

A lot of this happens through suggestion: when the imposingly bald-pate-cross-tattooed Bradley (Vince Vaughan) pulls into his mechanic job and is let go without much cause, we get that there’s likely some troubles in his past supporting his emloyer’s wavering.  When his wife (Jennifer Carpenter) admits to cheating and we watch him demolish a car by hand, that’s in your face, yes, but its done in silence; a quiet rage.  This is, eh, an emotional man, but when he proceeds inside and agrees with his wife – through a level-headed, eye-to-eye conversation – to give their marriage another go, we’re oddly ingratiated: emotional, violent, but heart o’ gold.

Which helps, 18 months later, in building up his rep as a drug runner for a local boss.  He’s got a big house now, baby on the way.  And his wife knows the score – there’s no unnecessary fluff in Mahler’s world for a lying husband subplot.

Of course, the next job goes wrong – we see the conflicted heart o’ gold in action again – and Bradley winds up in jail with a debt to work off.  Omens of trouble have been percolating throughout, as told by Zahler’s discordant mixing of funk music and his excellently subdued, Carpenter-esque score, along with d.p. Benji Bakshi’s dry and gritty lighting, perfectly capturing that no-bones-about-it vibe the world of 99 lives in, but it’s when the stakes of Bradley’s debt – his wife’s and unborn child’s lives – are made clear that things finally boil over.  And it’s a bloody, gooshy mess.

Vaughan, all the fellow actors, and especially the fight choreographer (Drew Leary is credited as ‘stunt coordinator’ – dunno if he’s the man to credit there) are all to be applauded for making these brawls look brutal and painful, though the foley artists go a bit overboard with bone-breaking noises.  I’m not fully sold on Vaughan as an actor – his rage and southerness ring a bit calculated here – but he also undeniably gives his all, and as far as I can tell, that’s him in all those fisticuffs, and those he does sell.

As things proceed and we get Don Johnson slingin’ profanities as a warden and toilets filled with shit and prison floors covered in glass and that lightning gets grittier and grittier, we know where this is heading, but it’s still riveting as heck.

But look: Zahler is keeping this squarely in B territory.  There’s no deeper meaning; no intention beyond getting to the end.  Some of the feints toward other genres – you swear it’ll become Undisputed at one point – are amusing, but ultimately you’re just waiting for the brawly shoe to drop.  Along the way we get some masterful scripting mixed with some strained acting; great lensing with maybe some oddly extended edits.  And a great exploitation flick that knows what it’s aiming for and rams itself into that bar until black and blue.