Reviewed by Justin Bateman
Stars Tom Hardy, Matt King, James Lance, Kelly Adams,
Katy Barker, Edward Bennett-Coles, June Bladon,
Amanda Burton, William Darke
Written by Brock Norman Brock & Nicolas Winding Refn
Certification UK 18
Runtime 92 minutes
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
“All my life I've wanted wanted to be famous.” These are the words of Charles Bronson (born Michael Peterson) who went on to become notorious as Britain’s most dangerous prisoner. It’s not much of a premise for a story, even a true one such as this, but then Bronson’s is not much of a life.
In 1974, at the age of 19, Bronson stole £26.18 from a post office brandishing a sawn off shotgun. He was imprisoned and since then has had no more than a couple of months of freedom. The reason for this is an unwillingness or inability to stop himself from committing acts of physical violence. To make this film at all is an interesting choice, not least for the number of questions it raises. But for me, it fails on a number of levels. Most importantly, there’s not much of a story. He goes to prison, beats up prison guards, gets moved to another prison, ad nauseam – literally in some cases, as the violence is often sickening. The lack of proper narrative means that director Nicolas Winding Refn uses a storytelling device in the form of Bronson compering a fictional stage show to link the episodes together. Some might consider this arty, to me it’s just clumsy.
So why has Refn made this film? If it’s to ask us to sympathise with Bronson it fails because he’s drawn almost entirely as a vicious psychopath. If it’s to glamorise Bronson through his acts of violence, perhaps it succeeds but then the whole thing becomes morally dubious. It’s clear that Bronson is, or certainly was, a troubled man. And there’s no doubt at all that he needed help, psychiatric or otherwise, and that to a certain extent he was a victim of a system which could not cope with him or would not try. But by not investigating this and by focusing almost solely on the violence, Refn is negligent. Towards the end, there is a hint of Bronson’s artistic talent and the epilogue seems at pains to point out that he hasn’t committed a violent act for much of the last decade. So why doesn’t the film look into that? The answer seems to be that Refn wants to shock more than he wants to understand or explain Bronson.
It must be said that Tom Hardy is awesome in the title role, giving a quite extraordinary performance of testosterone, machismo and raw energy. But even if the intention was to make Bronson uncomfortable viewing – and in this it succeeds – in the end it’s not enough to make it a good film.