Entertainment
Vince Vaughn’s Ambitious Performance in This 90% RT Prison Thriller Made Him an Unlikely Action Star
This past weekend brought the release of Hulu’s surprisingly entertaining Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice. While the movie is full of fun and quirky bits — ranging from a lively opening title sequence that’s headed by Ben Schwartz to an enthralling discussion about Gilmore Girls — its biggest perk has got to be Vince Vaughn‘s double-lead action performance, which crescendos with a satisfying climactic action set piece.
What’s more surprising than seeing him mow down a house full of faceless henchmen like he’s the protagonist of a Derek Kolstad-scripted action movie is how naturally he slides into the role. While this may be a shock to those who know Vaughn primarily for his comedic roles, it won’t be a complete surprise to those who have seen his collaborations with writer/director S. Craig Zahler. Specifically, his performance in Brawl in Cell Block 99, which demonstrated Vaughn’s ability to play against type from his usual comedic fare and his capacity to dominate the screen when the role requires him to throw down in an action scene.
Zahler’s Descension From Crime Film to Exploitation
Brawl in Cell Block 99 follows a drug mule named Bradley Thomas (Vaughn) who gets busted on a job and is sent to prison. While there, he’s informed that his pregnant wife (Jennifer Carpenter) has been abducted by the associates of a drug kingpin (Dion Mucciacito) that he failed during the drug bust. His only course of action is to act as a hit man and find and kill a fellow inmate in order to free his wife.
Structurally, Brawl in Cell Block 99 works much in the same way as did Zahler’s debut film, Bone Tomahawk, which is a classy western that devolves into a horrific cannibal horror film in its third act. Similarly, Cell Block 99 evolves from a straight-ahead crime drama to a seedy prison exploitation film, with Vaughn leading the charge. Aside from being unrecognizable with his shaved head and Southern drawl, the actor also has to capably portray a tough-as-nails, hardened badass, which he does remarkably well. This is thanks primarily to the execution of a decent number of choreographed fight scenes.
Vaughn has a background in wrestling, boxing, and jiu-jitsu, and he allegedly undertook three months of training and gained 15 pounds of muscle before filming to get into the physicality required for the role. You can see his training on the screen because, while this isn’t an “action” movie per se, it does require him to perform multiple, long-take, highly-choreographed fight scenes, often against multiple opponents at once.
Since it’s an S. Craig Zahler film, several of these are done in flat master shots, which you would think would make the action bland and dull-looking but actually give the fight scenes a clear sense of geography. You can always tell where everyone is in relation to one another, and it makes the hits more blunt and the takedowns more satisfying. The violence manages to feel authentic in its brutality, while still maintaining a sense of heightened realism in how Vaughn is portrayed like an unstoppable force rather than an ordinary man. Even in the film’s non-fight scenes, Vaughn is shot to look big and imposing, not to mention the fact that he takes a shot to the back with a barbell and barely flinches. If you liked the street fights in Blood & Bone or the long-take fight scene in Spike Lee‘s remake of Oldboy, the battles in Brawl in Cell Block 99 will be right up your alley.
BenDavid Grabinski’s wild adventure is overloaded with pop culture references, genre explorations, and fun characters.
Vaughn’s Comedic Capabilities in a Non-Comedic Role
Despite not playing a comedic character in the film, it’s worth noting that Vaughn still manages to give a very funny performance. Bizarrely, this may be one of his funnier performances, since his dry delivery paired with Zahler’s trademark snarky dialogue merge remarkably well. It’s not quippy in a way that deflates the tension or drama of a scene. If anything, it’s more like the character is mainly out to amuse himself.
The best example of this is the interrogation scene that leads to his incarceration. What could’ve been a throwaway scene before he gets sentenced to prison ends up being a good showcase for his sense of loyalty to those whom he’s close to, which obviously will become relevant later. In this case, he refuses to give up the name of his boss (who’s also his friend) and still manages to show insubordination by having fun with his interrogator, since he knows there’s no way out of his predicament. His verbal sparring with the detective to blatantly avoid naming names is one of the highlights of the film, showing off both the quality of the dialogue and Vaughn’s comedic timing.
Brawl in Cell Block 99, which is currently streaming on Tubi and Hulu, is an epic demonstration of Vaughn’s range as an actor and his physical capabilities as a stunt performer. So, if you’ve watched Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice and want to see more of Vince Vaughn killing guys in equally ludicrous (albeit stylistically different) ways, Zahler’s prison thriller is just a click away.
- Release Date
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September 23, 2017
- Runtime
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132 Minutes
- Director
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S. Craig Zahler
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