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.