On April 4, I reported that S. Craig Zahler’s “The Big Stone Grid” might be the filmmaker’s next film. He’s been pitching it around for many months now.
However, Zahler later blogged that he’s indeed eyeing ‘Stone Grid’ as a possibility but that, in recent weeks, he’s made more progress on another "different original project”, which could very well be his fourth and next film.
Today we learned that film to be the crime thriller, “The Bookie & the Bruiser.” Zahler is set to reunite with his “Dragged Across Concrete” and “Brawl in Cell Block 99” star, Vince Vaughn and Oscar winner, Adrien Brody (“The Pianist”). Here’s the synopsis:
Set in 1959 New York, “The Bookie & the Bruiser” follows a pensive, Jewish fellow named Rivner and an oversized Italian-American tough guy named Boscolo from the Lower East Side, both of whom served overseas during WWII and returned changed men who no longer fit inside the lives they’d left behind. Uninterested in taking orders from bosses or playing by the rules of polite society, the two friends partner up as a bookmaker and an enforcer and create an illicit gambling operation that proves to be very profitable, though risky, and their situation gets rather sticky when they find themselves stuck between a powerful Irish gang and the Mafia.
The film is currently in pre-production and is planned for a fall 2024 shoot. The thought of a new Zahler coming out in 2025 is great news, as the filmmaker is one of the more interesting cinematic voices to have emerged the last decade.
Zahler’s three films as a director, “Bone Tomahawk”, “Brawl In Cell Block 99,” and, especially, “Dragged Across Concrete,” speak for themselves.
These are singular works from a singular voice. Zahler’s very much what one might qualify as a methodical filmmaker, depicting the madness of morally tortured men. His dialogue packs a satisfying snap and the action almost always plays out in unbearably excruciating fashion.