Like "Bone Tomahawk" before it, "Brawl in Cell Block 99" starts off slow. The script takes its time setting up Bradley as a generally sympathetic hot-head who is also mercurial enough to gradually become the film's real antagonist. After he's fired from his auto-repair gig and discovers his wife Lauren (Jennifer Carpenter) has been cheating on him, he dismantles her car. But he keeps it together long enough to show that he has a plan and has previously earned Lauren's trust (offscreen, sometime prior to the film's events). He tells Lauren that he will resume an old, well-paying job delivering drugs in order to bring more money home, swears that he wants to reinvigorate their marriage by having a baby with her, then accepts her apology and asks her if she will "abide" by his terms. He makes this request after destroying her cell phone and totaling her car, mind you; nevertheless, Lauren agrees to abide. Suffice it to say that Bradley eventually ends up in prison, where he is forced to keep his rage in check despite numerous dehumanizing factors.
Sporting a shaved head with a huge crucifix tattooed on the back, Vaughn looks like an editorial cartoon of urban crime come to life. He's a damn good boogeyman: an unrepentant rage-case with a knack for brutality. But he does everything purposefully, from race-baiting Mexican bodybuilders to breaking the bones of white and black prison guards alike. And the writing convinces you that he believes in family values as well as in the idea that you should never start a fight you aren't willing to finish.
The character is made nearly charming by his martyr-like willingness to silently suffer ungodly punishment, his hard-boiled quips, his wing chun-meets-boxing fighting skills, and most of all by Vaughn's performance, which is revealed mostly through the actor's stiff gait, arch posture, and furious punches (augmented by meat-slab sound effects). Zahler has given Vaughn one of his most satisfying dramatic roles to date, and the actor makes Bradley seem as evidently volatile as he is potentially heroic.
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