Brawl in Cell Block 99

S. Craig Zahler, 2017, USA

Bradley Thomas is having a bad day: he’s just been fired and goes home to discover his wife (Jennifer Carpenter) is cheating. He turns to drug-running to resolve issues, but this is not to imply he’s just a scumbag or weak-willed: rather, he’s just a pragmatist that does what he feels needs to be done. But he has the ultra-violence and savvy to back it up. Nevertheless, getting involved with bad people eventually only leads to more trouble and a descent to cell block 99 and there’ll be no more turning his back on a violent nature.

The cover blurb quotes The Hollywood News saying “The most impressive director since Quentin Tarantino,” but S. Craig Sahler has in Bradley Thomas a character that cuts through all the verbose digressions and bullshit to the bone – the kind that both Tarantino and Vaughn are known for. Vince Vaughn plays Bradley with less of the Clint Eastwood existential machismo or Charles Bronson’s disinterest, but rather like ‘Point Blank’s Lee Marvin striding in and just punching without fanfare. The only one that seems likely to veer into broad villainous caricature is Don Johnson’s Warden Tuggs, but that turns out to be something of a red herring, despite being a lot of fun.

Bradley Thomas is someone who appears to have mostly turned his back on a life of violence but he triumphs at it when he unleashes. Sahler’s previous film ‘Bone Tomahawk’ established that he excels at extreme violence (very few times have a felt an audience so physically reacting to a killing), and ‘Brawl’ doesn’t disappoint. There is bound to be one or two moments that will lodge into your memory as un-erasable once seen. If films like ‘The Villainess’ and ‘The Raid’ are about skill, this is about brute force and in keeping with that candour action is not conveyed through fast cuts but rather unflinching straightforward shots. It is Vaughn’s hulking physical and terrifying directness that is likely to be most memorable.

There’s nothing new in the narrative but it’s all executed with a slyly fated and doomed air as if this is more than just riffing on that exploitation staple of the super-violent man hammering vengeance on all and sundry. But it’s very much grindhouse brutality through arthouse melancholy, the latter somewhat shaving off the rough edges of the former, making it gratuitous and restrained at the same time. There is none of the thoughtfulness on the topic of violence and community here that ‘Bone Tomohawk’ offered – indeed it appears that this was written beforehand – but that’s probably moot when you are flinching/giggling at the excess. ‘Brawl in Cell Bock 9’ offers movie violence and a more-or-less unbeatable fantasy male in a probably never-better Vince Vaughn performance. It’s a straightforward guilty pleasure where Zahler’s pacing and skill subscribes to a sincerity beyond trash even as Udo Kier is talking about dismembering foetuses and heads are being stomped. 

Bone Tomahawk

S. Craig Zahler, 2015, USA-UK

There’s a reason that S. Craig Zahler's ‘Bone Tomahawk’ turned up on a lot on horror blogs. It packs a considerable punch and by the time you get there, you have been lulled into a false sense of security so it strikes all the more; that is, you probably will think you know its limits, although the opening throat cutting should have been a clue to what is to come. Where Tarantino’s ‘The Hateful Eight’ plays with the genre of the spaghetti western, all full of colourful characters trying to outdo each other, recent films like ‘The Homesman’ and ‘Bone Tomahawk’ all come from a more neo-realistic, revisionist slant, mired in the heartache and consequences of violence and showing up ‘Eight’ as a dress-up pastiche. ('The Revenant' falls somewhere in between all these.) Even the affectations of ‘Slow West’ point towards an emotional realism. However, Katie Rife suggests it makes more sense through the lens of Italian Spaghetti Westerns. But when ‘Bone Tomahawk’ gets to its third act, anyone familiar with Don’t-Go-There horror will know the geography, and this is a truly creepy and horrifying example. This is walking in the same doomed trail as ‘The Offspring’, ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ and ‘Humains’, but in keeping its western neo-realism paramount it is all the more convincing and disturbing. 

A gang of men go in search of feared tribe of “Troglodytes” – the film is careful to separate this clan from Native Americans, although how successfully is perhaps open to question – when they appear to have abducted a woman from the town. Kurt Russell leads the ill-matched rescue team, composed of a rambling “back-up deputy”, an obviously bigoted gunman and the kidnapped woman’s husband. As “backup deputy” Chicory, Richard Jenkins steals the show by providing the film with most of its humour: his non sequiturs are one of the film’s great sources of pleasure, but look closely and don’t be fooled: he maybe past his prime but he’ll deliver as best he can when needed. His friendship with Kurt Russell’s Sheriff Franklin Hunt glues everything together and the writing never lets any narrowness of character create limitations. For example, Matthew Fox as the mercenary John Brooder goes someway to suggesting that beneath his brutality is something good struggling to get out; or Patrick Wilson as Arthur O’Dwyer manages heroism in a role that could have quickly become annoying – the crippled but stubborn-no-matter-what character. 

Elsewhere, Freddy Waff’s production design is also notable for being so credible (and perhaps it is inevitable that the cave scene will look most like a set) and Benji Bakshi's cinematography supplies the  crisp visuals and pretty Western vistas (and has a western ever felt so chalky?); Jeff Herriot’s and S. Craig Zahler’s score is mournful and unobtrusive. And although all these details are consummate, ultimately ‘Bone Tomahawk’ is a story of strong meat, centred on themes of duty and sacrifice. The troglodytes are genuinely scary, frightening embodiments of male violence unmitigated by the civility of the other characters of Bright Hope that are just as defined by it. It is happy to have a slow build-up of characterisation to ensure its gratuitousness has maximum impact. A great and gruelling show.