Shot Caller has the same general concept as
Brawl in Cell Block 99: take an A-list movie star and cast him against type as a hardcore tattooed criminal trying to protect his family in a prison drama, and, surprisingly, the results are just as great, if not greater, but for different reasons. In
Brawl, it is the fights that shine, while the drama is pedestrian excepting the protagonist's demeanor. In
Shot Caller, it is the drama that shines, and the action scenes are only used to reinforce the drama and are not intended to serve as spectacle themselves--which is why they can be far inferior to
Brawl's without hurting the movie at all.
Overall, I would say that this is the superior movie and not only because it ends with a shot of a Nietzsche book--though that certainly contributes to the drama and the message, which is once more, as in
Brawl, manhood; but here explored in much greater depth and detail, and even with a greater amount of brutality, if that is possible (and trust me, it is possible). Watching Coster-Waldau's innocent stockbroker turn into the most vicious motherfucker in the pen while an array of swastika-covered white supremacists egg him on to become "a victim or a warrior" must be one of the great joys of cinema, and I feel privileged to have experienced it, and will experience it many more times in the future, I am sure, as this is now one of my favorite movies. Don't miss it, and watch
Brawl first, because otherwise it will be anti-climactic. It is deeper than
Brawl, because
Brawl revels in the fights with a good conscience due to the family drama, while
Shot Caller goes further. It
starts out by using the family as an alibi for the violence, but it ends with a more or less clear
relishing of the power achieved through violence, and a certainly clear admonition from the filmmakers to the viewers to go read a bunch of books to understand the theory on why things are this way, and
must be this way. And there are definitely a couple of titles in there I haven't read, so I'll go read them now. Movies don't get deeper than this, or more instructive—or more visceral.