Before watching this I had only seen Vince Vaughn in comedies like SWINGERS and MADE so it was a bit of jolt to watch him in something so ultra-violent. I know he played Norman Bates in that horrendous PSYCHO remake but that always seemed like a terrible fever-dream of a film that I've tried to cleanse from memory. Anyway, what you get here is one of those movies where our main character(Vaughn) experiences nothing but bad luck, helped with not the best decisions, so we root for him to get some kinda revenge on society even though it all seems pretty hopeless. It's a men-in-prison deal which has the feeling of one of those torture-porn flicks due to all the head-smashing, bone-breaking and generally nihilistic tone of everything. The great Udo Kier shows up at some point as a creep threatening to have Vaughn's wife killed(Jennifer Carpenter (DEXTER's sister) and unborn child mutilated and/or aborted if he doesn't get himself transferred to an even worse prison and snuff someone for him and Don Johnson, of MIAMI VICE fame, plays a rather sadistic warden who likes torturing inmates in a very dungeon-like establishment(which really adds to the horror movie-motif).
Directed by S. Craig Zahler, who gave us the equally exceptional BONE TOMAHAWK, this is a rare example of a modern film that isn't a complete waste of time.
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