a review of 困斗99号囚室

Brawl in Cell Block 99 is an odd beast of a film. It starts as a regular 'Tough guy gets into trouble and will have to prove what he's made of in prison' type of film. But once the main character has been jailed, the film turns into an almost surreal, pitch-black parody of the prison film genre. I liked the wide-angle camera shots and carefully staged screen compositions, which gave a comic-like touch to the scenes, and made Vince Vaughn look even taller than he already is. Vaughn is convincing as an almost super-human character you really don't want to piss off, although the fight scenes are relatively indolent, with almost cartoonishly exaggerated violence, which all adds to the unreal atmosphere of Brawl in Cell Block 99. The film feels more like a nightmare than reality. Lastly, it was pleasant to see an old childhood hero of mine back: Don Johnson, celebrated in the 1980s for his role in Michael Mann's classic Miami Vice series. He's still cool. 😎