Born Michael Peterson in a British suburb in 1952, he first went to prison at the age of 22 for burglarizing a post office. In the brief period of his release from jail - he'll return again 69 days later, after a robbery and assault - the real world makes him uncertain and soft.Forget career criminals: Charlie Bronson is a career prisoner. Like some perverse twist on "prison of the mind" melodramas like The Shawshank Redemption, Refn contends that prison is liberating to Peterson - in his words, "a place where I could sharpen my tools." He may look like a caged animal, but the instinct to strike anyone within pummeling distance doesn't arise from deep-seated frustration or resentment of authority he just enjoys doing it, especially when it pads his resume as England's premier outlaw. As played with gleefully sinister elan by Tom Hardy - who reportedly added 100 pounds of muscle for the role - Peterson spins his life into a gripping yarn that casts him as a wronged man, despite all evidence to the contrary. Just as Stanley Kubrick's version of anti-hero Alex jauntily terrorized his victims to the tune of "Singin' in the Rain," Refn makes Peterson the star of his own performance art piece, inviting his imagined (and crisply dressed) audience to enjoy his bloody exploits.
Even his face - a gleaming oval of pure malevolence, with a bald pate and a mid-19th century moustache - suggests a "wanted" sign posted on the town sheriff's door.īronson has made a life out of his life sentence by playing to an imagined audience that revels in his "art."įresh off the last two chapters of the Pusher trilogy, his cult-favorite crime saga about the Copenhagen drug scene, Refn brings the same stripped-down, pulpy aesthetic to Bronson - at least when he isn't taking his cues from A Clockwork Orange.
BRONSON FILM MOVIE
And whatever answers they do provide concern Peterson's submission to his alter ego (an homage to the famed movie tough guy) and the cult of celebrity that transformed this common brute into a notorious villain of Old West proportions.
Mercifully, the two-fisted biopic Bronson doesn't play armchair psychologist the question of what makes Charlie fight isn't something director Nicolas Winding Refn and his co-screenwriter, Brock Norman Brock, care to resolve. His rap sheet is tabloid heaven, but the "whys" of his case are a little hard to fathom: He doesn't come from a broken home, he wasn't bullied or abused as a child, and despite his yen for inflicting grievous bodily harm, his open-ended prison sentence includes not a single fatality. Dubbed "the most violent prisoner in Britain" (and for the effort involved in containing him, the most expensive, too), Peterson has attacked guards and fellow convicts, incited riots, staged hostage situations and generally brought chaos to the dozens of institutions through which he's passed.
BRONSON FILM PROFESSIONAL
Operating under the nom de thug Charlie Bronson, professional inmate Michael Peterson has brutalized his way from a simple seven-year armed robbery sentence to 35 years and counting - 30 of them in solitary confinement. With: Tom Hardy, Terry Stone, Amanda Burton, Kelly Adams, Matt King Rated R, for an anti-hero whose sensibilities will offend just about everyone else's
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