Rating: R | Runtime: 92 minutes
Release Date: March 13th, 2009 (UK) / October 9th, 2009 (USA)
Studio: Vertigo Films / Magnet Releasing
Director(s): Nicolas Winding Refn
Writer(s): Brock Norman Brock and Nicolas Winding Refn

You just pissed on a gypsy in the middle of nowhere.

Michael Gordon Peterson is the kind of guy that begs to have his story told … no matter how loosely or non-factual it proves. Known as Britain’s most violent criminal under the alias Charles Bronson (based on the actor), he was sentenced to seven years in prison for the armed robbery of a post office. He has thus far spent thirty-four years (thirty in solitary confinement) and counting due to attacks on the inside.

Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson depicts this intense creature of pure aggression by portraying his insanity and odd sense of compassion. Despite all that time in jail, he’s never killed a person … although he did come close once. Bronson instead stages kidnappings of guards to draw in more people to fight. He finds himself locked in a drug-induced stupor at a mental institution, warring underground in an illegal boxing ring, and performing a vaudeville act of his life to an audience that only exists in his head. This highly entertaining film allows star Tom Hardy to give a performance that can only be described as a tour de force.

While appearing ripe for a somewhat boring construction—how many times can we watch a man provoke, beat-up, and get beaten before wondering if anything new will happen—Hardy never allows it to plateau. On screen for its entirety, Bronson’s portrayal is magical in the sense that he’s only ever been possessed by this high-energy spitfire. Even in the fantasy stage of his mind, he erupts with rage when the audience’s reaction isn’t what he desires. Hardy paints his face for comedy, reenacts moments between himself and a hospital doctor by dressing up his profiles as one of each, and stares at the camera in pitch-black with only his body illuminated to monologue. The one constant is a creepily ecstatic smile that forms whenever recalling those happy memories of violence.

Peterson always wanted to be famous. With a childhood full of fighting and abuse—one instance showing him manhandling a teacher at thirteen by throwing a desk on his prone for good measure—everyone knows infamy is what awaits. His mother is oblivious to his obvious mental break, coddling him and never listening to the authorities who regularly bring him home. He eventually marries and has a child, but it’s more a convenience than a union of love. While she takes care of the baby, he’s in the other room sawing the barrel off a shotgun for the crime that finally puts him behind bars.

Jail isn’t a cruel and unusual world for him, though. It’s a hotel room in which he can hone his skills and improve his weapons. No matter how cramped or small the cell, he finds a way to workout and get stronger, mentally practicing the moves that Charles Bronson uses in the movies. It’s all practice for when he feels the need for a little enjoyment via talking back to the guards, holding them hostage, or just being plain belligerent and uncooperative. Peterson never has trouble finding a sparring partner inside.

I have no idea how much of what’s depicted is true, but it doesn’t really matter. Some incidents are so obscene and crazy that their relevance to fact is of little importance when compared to their entertainment value. Who doesn’t want to see this violent sociopath properly serve tea to a jail guard and inmate? Or watch him fight in his boxing ring, pummeling his opponents and then turning to face the crowd with smiles and hands raised while the other guy gets back up to hit him? He’s a child playing a game and loving every single minute.

It doesn’t take much to spark Peterson’s temper, nor does the prospect of freedom make him want to become a model citizen. He attempts to kill a man in the insane asylum so that he can be put back in prison. He revels in this world of darkness and solitude as a battleground to escape his own mind. He’s a criminal that has done nothing but cause mayhem and financial strain to the government, yet his cultural star shines bright. Becoming an artist inside, his creative outlet just happens to breed more violence regardless of how many award-winning works he’s published in real life.

Again, though, the story alone wouldn’t make a great film. Success lies in the creative hands of Hardy and Winding Refn. The movie shows how it won’t be your usual biopic right from the start. In a scene of pure aggression, we watch a close-up of a bloodied Bronson pacing in his cell, practicing his jabs, and waiting for the guards he knows are coming. With music blaring, the assault begins with him battling four men on his own and smiling the entire time before the film’s title stamps onto frame to transport us back so Hardy can explain how it all got to that point.

Bronson is beautifully shot too despite its hellish subject matter with interesting camera angles and tricks to delineate each environment whether the outside world, jail, hospital, or Peterson’s mind in inner-monologue or stage show. And Hardy is absolutely brilliant. He’s so charismatic that you start to want him to beat the next man to a pulp if only to hear his account or reasoning or glimpse that mustached grin lighting up his face. Naked for much of the film and painted for the rest, Hardy throws himself into this insanely manic role to craft a rousing caricature of a very sick man. Unless, of course, the character is more like the real person than we’d believe.

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Tom Hardy in BRONSON, a Magnet Release. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing.