The year’s best film about brutal and emotional anger lies within S. Craig Zahler’s tribute to 1970’s exploitation films.

| Jul 2, 2024

…Vaughn has never been better than he is here…

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 18, 2023

As with Tomahawk, the film looks absolutely hideous: super-digital, with lots of interiors bathed in sick greens and grays. Please get this man a great color correction package for his next feature.

| Jan 10, 2023

A gritty, primal film that contains artful sensibilities and substantive characters.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 17, 2022

When Vaughn hurts, the audience hurts with him.

| Jun 11, 2021

Vince Vaughn is a savage with a strict moral code in the best role of his career.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 29, 2021

Director S. Craig Zahler expertly deconstructs a character and tells a gripping story of a man pushed to his limits.

| Original Score: A- | Jan 29, 2021

Despite all of its pretensions, Brawl in Cell Block 99 is ultimately just as brainless as its title.

| Dec 11, 2020

Thank you, S. Craig Zahler, for resurrecting Vaughn's career. You'll never look at the actor the same way after this film.

| Nov 10, 2020

Vaughn comes off looking like Boris Karloff's Frankenstein's Monster channeling the spirit of Jason Statham.

| Mar 30, 2020

Brawl in Cell Block 99 is a bone breaking, face stomping, skull crushing experience that is viciously torturous to endure at times, but is lustfully satisfying when you've had a rough day.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 2, 2019

...a slow-moving narrative that grows more and more absorbing as the admittedly familiar storyline unfolds...

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 9, 2019

Undoubtedly, Brawl will be too much for many, if not most, viewers, and even if the violence doesn't put you off, the surrealness of it just might. Roll with it, though, and it's a brilliant, skull-shaking thriller unlike anything else you'll see.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 27, 2019

I celebrate the catharsis of Cell Block 99 for dramatizing the personal virtues imperiled by venal officials and partisan social arbiters as well as by fate.

| Feb 5, 2019

Vaughn's unrelentingly great performance anchors a movie that will engage you for every minute of its runtime. Surprisingly very, very good.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Dec 21, 2018

I don't even know if I liked this film, or if I'm just impressed by how well Zahler wraps the coils of grindhouse brutality around his fingers, giving it to us in measured drams before throwing caution to the wind.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 10, 2018

Brawl In Cell Block 99 is simultaneously patient, methodical, sharply character focused, and shockingly frank in its unparalleled violence.

| Nov 2, 2018

It's all kind of ridiculously over the top, exploitative and moving further from reality as the plot unrolls, yet the film also well enough made not to be a B movie - it's maybe a B+. Genre fans will love it.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 17, 2018

Hideous, graphic violence in prison horror story.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 17, 2018

It's tonally uneven, excessively long, repetitive and fails to properly build momentum even when it leans into its gonzo exploitation characteristics

| Sep 21, 2018