What is Brawl in Cell Block 99?
Bradley Thomas is a former boxer and recovering alcoholic, who makes a meagre living working as a mechanic. Trapped in an unhappy marriage, he loses said job at the start of proceedings, and all too quickly turns to crime. When that career-change inevitably turns sour, he’s sent to jail, where Bradley is suddenly controlled by forces from the outside, this hulking brute of a man battling both to stay alive, and protect his wife and unborn child.
Re-Inventing Vince Vaughn
Vince Vaughn tried to play a tough guy in Season 2 of True Detective. It didn’t work, with Vaughn about as convincing and intimidating as a kitten. Albeit a very tall kitten. Playing Brawl in Cell Block 99’s Bradley Thomas wipes the slate clean, however, and will help to re-define the actor’s career going forward.
Best known for his motor-mouth and wisecracks in the likes of Swingers, Dodgeball and Wedding Crashers, Vaughn is the polar opposite in this gritty crime thriller, channelling his inner Clint Eastwood to play a man of few words, who prefers instead to talk with his fists.
The difference is clear when we first see Vaughn’s character, his head bald, a huge cross tattooed on the back. And becomes even clearer in one of the film’s early scenes when, having received bad news, Thomas takes his anger out on a car. Which could look ridiculous — as fans of Fawlty Towers know all too well. But here the man-on-car fist fight tells you everything you need to know about Bradley, a bubbling volcano of rage, frustrated by his dire social and economic situation, and ready to erupt at any moment. He’s much more just a thug, however, preferring to take his anger out on an inanimate object rather than the nearest person.
Thomas is a sincere man. A patriotic man. A god-fearing man. And he’s trying to do the right thing. He makes mistakes, turning to crime when it seems like all other avenues are blocked. But he also has a strong moral compass, best illustrated when a drug deal goes wrong, and Bradley’s honourable actions get him sent to prison.
Game of Death
Until this point, Brawl is a gritty thriller about bad things happening to a guy we believe to be inherently good. Then Udo Kier shows up, and all bets are off. In deeply sinister fashion, Kier’s character explains what is happening to Bradley’s family on the outside, and what he must do on the inside to keep them alive.
What follows is less like a traditional movie, and more akin to a video game, as Thomas moves from prison-prison, fighting a series of increasingly powerful bad guys to complete the mission and save his princess.
And it’s BRUTAL. Writer-director S. Craig Zahler shot a memorably shocking moment of violence for his brilliant debut Bone Tomahawk, and here he fills his film with them, gouging eyeballs, flaying skin, and breaking what seems like hundreds of bones.
Bradley’s early opponents are guards, who don’t know what’s hit them when Thomas lashes out. But when he’s sent to maximum security — and exchanges his blue prison uniform for orange — the game is really on.
Entering Hell
There he’s incarcerated alongside molesters, psychotics, and those on death row. And meets his match in the shape of Warden Tuggs. Played by Don Johnson — chewing on a cigar with the same intensity that he chews on the scenery — Tuggs doesn’t believe in rehabilitation, but rather punishment and humiliation.
He sends Bradley to an underground cell deep in the earth; a de-humanizing hell of excrement, violence and medieval torture that paints the U.S. penal system in a pretty unflattering light.
But Brawl is far from a political film (though what politics are there seem somewhat confused, liberal one minute, conservative the next). And it isn’t simply a violent thriller, though thrills and violence do play their part. Rather, it’s a riveting character study of a man so filled with contradictions that you rarely know what he’s going to do next. Which makes Bradley Thomas all the more intriguing.
Zahler’s tight, taut script masterfully sets him up in the first few scenes as an anti-hero for the modern age, but it’s Vaughn’s performance that dominates proceedings, and has you rooting for Bradley Thomas in spite of the many, many terrible things he does.
Is Brawl in Cell Block 99 Good?
Bob Dylan once sang of jail endeavouring to turn a man into a mouse, but the best prison movies of recent years — A Prophet and Starred Up — have done just the opposite to their protagonists.
Brawl in Cell Block 99 attempts neither, however. Instead, it turns a man into a monster. The film certainly isn’t for the faint-hearted, while those who dislike the sound of breaking bones and snapping sinews should probably close their ears for the duration.
But if you can stomach the ultra-violence, it’s well worth joining Bradley Thomas on his journey into hell, as this is a monster movie with both heart and soul.
Brawl in Cell Block 99 screened at Fantastic Fest and will be released in October 2017.