The first Brawl in Cell Block 99 trailer has been released. The new film from S. Craig Zahler (Bone Tomahawk) stars Vince Vaughn as “Bradley, a former boxer-turned-drug runner who lands in a prison and must survive the savage battleground that he’s now stuck in.” Surprisingly, this trailer mostly holds back on the prison brawling and teases us with stuff that happens outside the prison walls with Bradley wailing on his car. It also conveys that this is the kind of movie where the lead is a good guy who’s going to do some very bad things to worse people. I can’t wait.

I’m also encouraged by Zahler’s Bone Tomahawk, a movie that did some interesting things with the western genre and got great performances from its lead characters. Plus, I like that Vaughn is continuing to take on interesting roles. It may not always work out (True Detective Season 2), but at least he’s departing from “Wise-ass guy who thinks he knows everything but gets his comeuppance.” Cell Block looks unlike anything Vaughn has attempted before, and I’m eager to see this performance.

Check out the Brawl in Cell Block 99 trailer below. The film will play at Venice, TIFF, and Fantastic Fest before opening on October 6th and hitting VOD and Digital HD on October 13th.

Here’s the official synopsis for Brawl in Cell Block 99:

A former boxer named Bradley loses his job as an auto mechanic, and his troubled marriage is about to expire.  At this crossroads in his life, he feels that he has no better option than to work for an old buddy as a drug courier.  This vocation improves his situation until the terrible day that he finds himself in a gunfight between a group of police officers and his own ruthless allies.  When the smoke clears, Bradley is badly hurt and thrown in prison, where his enemies force him to commit acts of violence that turn the place into a savage battleground.