DVD Review - Bronson (R4)

Hardened English career criminal Charles Bronson (born Michael Peterson) has spent most of the past 35 years behind bars. Initially sentenced in 1974 to seven years for robbing a Post Office at gunpoint, Bronson’s penchant for violence and the many crimes he’s committed while incarcerated have seen his prison terms continually extended. And that’s the way he seems to like it: released in 1988 he spent just 69 days outside custody before being arrested for robbery and once more imprisoned. The same thing happened following a 1992 release during which he spent just 53 days as a free man. There are echoes in his story of our own Chopper Read; after so many years in Her Majesty’s Service the man clearly has no idea how to live outside the prison system that gives him status, security and an identity. During his time on the inside Peterson has committed countless acts of violence against guards and fellow inmates and been involved in numerous hostage situations, including one notable instance where he kidnapped and badly beat a deputy governor.

Having taken on the Bronson moniker as a young bare-knuckle boxer, the now 57-year-old seems to revel in his notoriety and loose cannon persona, and due to his countless instances of dangerous behaviour has spent all but four years of his prison time in solitary confinement.Which is why it is hardly surprising to learn than prison officials in the UK are extremely displeased with Bronson’s portrayal in director Nicolas Winding Refn’s latest feature. Refn is highly enamoured with what he perceives as the theatrical nature of the Bronson persona, and so it is that over the course of the film we see Bronson as a makeup-clad harlequin, at times literally delivering his lines from a stage in front of a rapt audience like the most seasoned of thespians. It’s a point that is hammered home repeatedly, that the character Peterson has created over the years has overshadowed his own identity to the point where Bronson the creation and Peterson the man are now indistinguishable. It’s a unique and unexpected tone for a British crime flick to take, and some of its more theatrical conceits might have come across as faintly ridiculous were it not for Refn’s flair for elegant storytelling and a strikingly charismatic performance from Black Hawk Down’s Tom Hardy, who attained the requisite bulk for the role by matching the real-life Bronson’s schedule of 2500 pushups per day.

As it stands this gritty examination of criminality and the thirst for celebrity is a beast as formidable as the character it attempts to dissect.Comparisons with Andrew Dominik’s Chopper are unavoidable, but whereas Chopper more often than not comes across as an irascible larrikin Peterson is, by his own admission, little more than a ‘horrible, nasty, violent man.’ This is evident from the outset and initially does little to ingratiate him to the viewer, but Hardy’s performance is so striking and the Bronson character so complex and contradictory that we can’t help but be drawn in to the remarkable world conjured by Refn. All in all it’s a hallucinatory and highly operatic work, and most of the most beguiling and original films in the Madman oeuvre.