A unconventional, art house semi-biopic of a genuine, bizzare and twisted human being, Nicolas Winding Refn takes an almost stream of conciousness approach towards the true story of Britain's most notorious prisoner Michael Petersen, aka Charlie Bronson.
Using some bizzare cinematic techniques, namely not so much breaking the fourth wall as much as obliterating it while refusing to show any dependence on chronology, Refn attempts to get us into the head of Bronson, in an almost misguided effort to allow the viewer to understand the man.
Tom Hardy is the titular character, and carries the film on incredibly musculed shoulders, going for long stretches with no other character on screen and the traditional inner dialogue replaced by pantomine pieces to camera, in which Bronson is performing a one man stage show and recounting his life.
Michael Peterson, born and raised in Luton, quickly develops a thirst for fame as unquenchable as his penchance for violence. But, after scrapping for much of his life, he deduces that he lacks the traditional talents for such a walk of life: namely acting or singing. Instead he robs a post office with a sawn off shotgun, bags £26.18 for his trouble, and is promptly jailed for four years.
As the film takes a free flowing, uncertain narrative, Peterson indulges in his main love, getting naked and then fighting. His constant attacks on prison guards and hostage taking situations simultaneously makes him a cult hero with his fellow inmates and a permanent thorn in the side of his jailers. While his reputation behind bars grows, so does his prison sentence. With much of his time spent in solitary confinement, the sentence dissolves into an indefinite lock in. Not that Peterson much minds, seeing his cell as a hotel room and prison as his home and a stepping stone to something much greater, yet unspecificied.
Over the years, Peterson finds himself in the faces of different wardens, staring at the walls of increasingly smaller stone rooms, enduring a stretch in a creepy psychiatric ward, where he kills a fellow patient, and even making the news by leading a prisoner's vigil atop the roof at Broadmoor. Eventually, almost by way of resignation, the judiciary system sees fit to release him back into soceity. Almost sarcastic in his attempts to re-adapt into the real world, Peterson finds an opportunity for the fame he seeks in the form of flamboyant talent seeker Paul Daniels (Matt King). As the subject of some bizzare art-fighting, Peterson adopts the professional name of Charles Bronson (after the actor), which he later decides upon as his identity. After a hopelessly doomed love affair sees him steal an engagement ring from a jewellers, he is sent back to the slammer.
This second spell on the inside, as it turns out, lasts decades and the real man is still behind bars. Despite efforts by his warders to find sedation, and a few more chances presented for Bronson to make more of himself, particularly in the form of art teacher Phil (James Lance), he constantly falls back into old routines, taking hostages in his cell, stripping naked and fighting gangs of baton wielding guards in an increasingly meaningless ritual. By ironic turn of fate, or by twisted design, the film itself perversely justifies Bronson's approach towards finding fame; he's better known now than ever, even without the stage show.
Looking back at a such a blistering feast, there are two factors which stand out and ultimately demand each other to make the film work. The first is the direction. Refn, the Danish Director behind the Pusher trilogy and soon to be released Ryan Gosling vehicle Drive, makes no apologies and attempts no coercion in his approach, allowing Bronson to tell his story on his own terms, so to speak. While the piece is for the most part set in prison, there are no constraints on the style, and minimal attention played to plotting and gritty realism, with creative license and artistic metaphor prominent. The non-linear scope gives the film the feel of somebody telling you a story.
And this is where the second factor comes in: Tom Hardy. Let's not beat around the bush, this a one man show and for such a showcase a truly talented actor must step forward. And step forward he does.
Delivering one of the most memorable performances of the decade, a physically transformed Hardy sheds any previous conceptions to disappear into the part. As the poster states, "Tom Hardy IS Bronson". He takes on the man myth with a certain humanity never too far from the surface, but is frank enough to know that Bronson's self made image and projection are the keys to the legend. At various turns hilarious, frightening, amiable, loathsome and tragic, he brings a quirky and honest face to a frankly dishonest aura and framing. From his twitchily unpredictable and pent up stage outings, to his silent and deadly reading of other characters, right down to the film's final shot, he brings a wide range of thought, energy and occasionally emotion, although almost all are at one end of the spectrum. Make no mistake, Bronson is, first and foremost, a maniac.
Throwing in some Kubrick references and old fashioned filming style and 70's/80's design, Bronson has the look of retro-grade cult film, completely defying it's release date of 2008 and throwing you into a surreal, occasionally disturbing sub-genre. Comparisons to A Clockwork Orange may be simplistic and potentially damaging to viewer expectations, but are ultimately in the right ball park. Both films enjoy a similarly amoral aptmosphere that skirts the small details of morality and pumps up the gallows humour at the expense of unneccesary pathos. The use of classical music presents the tale as operatic, which in many ways it almost is. One man vs the world in the Klaus Kinski mould.
One of the most fascinating side effects of watching the film, however, is the almost desperate pursuit of answers at the final curtain. The viewer desperately attempts to work out Bronson, asking themself why he went through nearly forty years of incarceration and isolation, what could possibly justify such an extreme anti-social mentality and constant self destruction. Seeing him as some sort of one man army, a vigilante type figure and some sort of little man hero, is deluded, as is the notion he ever went to such lengths for anyone other than himself. A megalomaniac psychopath, devoid of a path and consoled by delusions of grandeur and the belief in his own importance? Probably. This is as definitive as things get, which bizzarely makes the piece far more satisfying.
Overall, a stunning character piece of one of the 20th Century's most bizzare figures, reaching operatic levels of storytelling and led by a sensational turn by one of cinema's brightest up and coming talents. While no attempt to justify the man's life is made, it is a life worth watching.
9/10
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