DURING ONE OF the few scenes of Bronson to actually take place inside a prison cell, Charles Bronson (Tom Hardy) paces the perimeter of his cell, his voiceover providing a battle-drum accompaniment: "For most people, prison is tough. A monotonous nightmare: 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year of pure, unadulterated, living, breathing hell. But for me, prison was finally a place where I could sharpen my tools, hone my skills.... It was an opportunity, and a place where soon, every native was gonna know my name."

Bronson was born Michael Peterson, and sentenced, at age 22, to seven years in prison for robbing a post office. Thirty-five years later, he's still in jail—attacks on prison guards, hostage taking, and rooftop protests have spun his seven-year stint into a life sentence. His violent stunts have gained him notoriety both inside the system and out—and that notoriety, according to the excellent new film Bronson, is exactly the point.

Bronson is no biopic. Most of Bronson's life has been spent in solitary confinement, after all; there's not much autobiographical information to begin with, and what little there is gets freely embellished in director Nicolas Winding Refn's sadistically funny vision. Here, draped in an emcee's garb, Bronson makes a fiction of his own life, hosting his story in front of an enraptured audience with an oddly touching combination of bluster and pride.

Tom Hardy brings a violent cheer to the role of Bronson, along with a ferocious appetite for brawling (and a total disregard for its consequences) that recalls a slightly less sociopathic A Clockwork Orange. Bronson's ultraviolence is entirely of his own making as he punches his way toward the only thing that matters: an audience. And if Bronson didn't have that before? Well, he does now.