The book that will someday be written detailing the evolution of the cinematic head-stomp will be divided, rather like the most unfortunate victim of “Bone Tomahawk,” into two halves: before S. Craig Zahler‘s ‘Tomahawk’ follow-up, “Brawl in Cell Block 99,” and after. And by rights it deserves to be a similar marker in the career of star Vince Vaughn, who plays protagonist Bradley — occasional stompee, but more often stomper of said heads. The smooshed faces, exposed bone and constant one-gruesome-shot-more-than-we-were-expecting brutality of these moments are what will bring all the boys to the prison yard, and they do not disappoint. But it’s Vaughn’s caged-beast charisma (that bounces off the screen long before he is actually caged) and way with a wink or a pithy putdown that keeps us riveted through the substantial sections of the film where heads remain, for the time being, unstomped.
Bradley gets let go from his mechanic job in the opening scene, and returns home to discover his wife Lauren (a rangy and resolute Jennifer Carpenter) has been seeing another man. This “marriage falling apart on the same day unemployment hits” trope is familiar, but just look at how Zahler handles it: First, there’s the taciturn standoff between Bradley and his boss, which culminates in Bradley leaving quietly, yet charging the air around him with the potential for physical menace. And then there’s a terrific shot (Zahler has a background in cinematography and together with DP Benji Bakshi creates some striking frames) where through two intervening car windows we distinctly make out Lauren dabbing make up on her neck. She is covering up either a bruise or a love bite: is it abuse or an affair?
She confesses to the latter and Bradley’s dam breaks. Finally, out bursts the violence promised by every singing sinew of Vince Brawn’s bulked-up physique, but it doesn’t land on Lauren. Instead Bradley essentially Hulk-smashes her car to smithereens with his bare hands in an instantly classic sequence: a new riff on auto-erotic violence. Inside the house, they reach a detente, but when Lauren goes to embrace him, Bradley warns her away. It’s a move you can either read as protecting her from the latent rage that still bubbles inside him, or an expression of sensitivity and hurt at her betrayal that will take some time to heal. It’s part of the depth of Vaughn’s performance, that has both Burt Lancaster-style physical capability and a quick-ticking internal intelligence that compels even in repose, that both reads work.
Eighteen months later, Lauren is delightedly pregnant and they live in a huge well-appointed house which they can afford because ex-alcoholic Bradley has swallowed his scruples and is working for drug dealer Gil (‘Buffy”s Marc Blucas as a racist druglord? What a time to be alive!). Against his better judgment, and lured by the promise of three months off when his daughter is born, Bradley goes to pick up a big stash with a couple of dim-bulb henchmen loyal to Gil’s new Mexican cartel partner. His misgivings prove well founded, the deal goes south and he gets sent away for seven years. Yes, our hard man threw in on a life-ruining gig in return for…paternity leave.
Things get worse on the inside (once he gets past the stickler admissions guard played by a hilariously fey Fred Melamed) as an agent for the cartel played by Udo Kier kidnaps Lauren and threatens gruesome torture unless Bradley makes good on his debt by murdering a fellow inmate. Of course, he’ll have to get there first: the guy is in Red Leaf, a maximum security prison built “before that big fuss about the humane treatment of prisoners” and run by a sadistic warden (Don Johnson) with a fleet of guards who more resemble a militia. From here, the lengthy “Brawl in Cell Block 99” (132 mins) quits teasing that title and embraces it, though it’s less a classic brawl and more an escalating series of one-on-one dust-ups that are grisly, bruising and brief. When you punch this well you never have to punch very long.
Politically though, like many films of its genre, ‘Brawl’ is troublesome. Not only does it offer violence as a solution in time-honored exploitation fashion, it actively courts slightly muddled controversy with its unsavory optics of a shaven-headed, Southern-accented white guy with an unexplained cross tattooed on the back of his head beating down on Latino inmates, Hispanic drug runners and black guards. Bradley’s refutation of his southern heritage is one small tack against that current, but an odd scene in which he asserts his patriotic attachment to the stars and stripes muddies the issue. Certainly Mexicans, Koreans and citizens of whatever planet Udo Kier comes from could be justified in taking offense at how evilly they’re represented, if one is of a mind to believe these characters are representative of anyone but their fucked-up selves.
But it’s hard to hold the way the film is open to appropriation by a certain bone-headed segment of its audience against the film itself as streamlined, confident, grimy entertainment. Just as Zahler’s debut has become quickly enshrined in movie lore as the first time anyone saw a guy being bisected the long way yet is also a terrifically witty, characterful genre western, his sophomore film is a great deal more than the sum of its various bloodied body parts. It’s a richly drawn crime and punishment fable, a noirish b-movie with real fondness for its cinematic forerunners, an extravagantly gory exploitation flick and a blistering showcase for the Vaughnaissance which, after a false start in “True Detective” season 2, and some cold-blooded scene theft in “Hacksaw Ridge” seems finally, incontrovertibly here.
Zahler was on writing, directing and composing duties (creating the authentically ’70s-sounding funk and soul soundtrack cuts as well as the score) which must surely confirm him as one of the most exciting all-rounders to happen to American genre cinema in recent years. His first two films are such nasty, grungy fun, in fact, that the only worry is they’ll set too high (or too scuzzily low) a bar for the third to clear. But then we read that Zahler’s next project reunites most of this cast including Vaughn, adds a comeback-hungry but still controversial Mel Gibson into mix, is called [fans self] “Dragged Across Concrete” and oh for God’s sake just take my money already. [A-]
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