I Watch Films: Brawl in Cell Block 99

Vince Vaughn (shaven-headed with a cross tattoo on the back) plays Bradley Thomas, a drug runner, when things go wrong and he shoots some gang members and is arrested. He’s sentenced to seven years in Franklin R James (FRJ – known as the fridge) medium security prison, a modern, clean, mundanely strict facility.

Unfortunately the drug lord kidnaps his pregnant wife and makes grotesque threats which he will carry out unless Thomas kills a prisoner. The problem is that the prisoner is in Redleaf, a maximum security prison (a much more clichéd old school sadistic place), in cell block 99. Thomas efficiently makes his way there by the most obvious of means – punching people.

As the story goes on the violence gets more gruesome. It ends up being a grim, visceral, unpleasantly violent series of fights, separated by increasingly worse conditions and casual sadism. I think I've only seen Vaughn in comic roles previously so... this was not really what I expected.

Watch This: For a grindhouse style prison fight film that gets steadily more and more explicitly violent.
Don’t Watch This: If you would prefer not to have scenes of bonebreaking, mutilation, torture, or a car being torn apart by hand.