Brawl In Cell Block 99 (2017)

Starring: Vince Vaughn, Don Johnson, Marc Blucas, Jennifer Carpenter, Udo Kier

Director: S Craig Zahler

A man loses his job and discovers that his wife has been cheating on him. He decides to try again with her, and have a baby, and return to running drugs. But when the job goes bad, he finds himself locked up. But things are about to get worse. He must manage to get himself into Cell Block 99 in a maximum security prison and kill a man or his pregnant wife will face a fate worse than death.

This is kind of an odd film. If you’ve seen Bone Tomahawk (it has the same writer/director) and heard that Vince Vaughn is playing a bad ass, then you might think that this film is one that should be added to your immediate watch list. But there’s something off about this film.

On the one hand, it has some interesting names on it, and a very interesting premise. On the other, it takes forever, and I mean FOREVER to get going, it looks like it wasn’t graded properly, some of the shots looks right out of a film school graduation film, and the plot and dialogue are so dire. So much that happens in this film doesn’t really make sense.

So whilst I want to say it’s not a great film and most of you will hate it, I have to point out that the B movie violence and effects in this film that are kind of fun. OK, the choreography is pretty soft and looks really slow, but there are some hilarious cartoon violent moments where people’s faces come off and arms snap like twigs. I mean, it’s really silly and I have no idea why this film is so bad when Bone Tomahawk was so interesting, but I think that some of you will get a kick out of it, all the same.

But it is really slow. You’ve been warned.

See It If: you like B movie gore (though there’s not that much of it) and you don’t mind slow films.