It’s like Boston shame day today. Another great film we saw at the Independent Film Festival of Boston that we didn’t have time to spit out is the new Nicolas Winding Refn film, “Bronson.”
Theatrically expressive, mordantly operatic and with lots of deliciously absurdist and loony Kubrick-like moments (a mix of the austere ‘2001’ palette and framing with the chaos of “Clockwork Orange”), “Bronson,” is hysterical, brutal and awe-inspiring. It’s an audacious and bold picture you must see and it’s great to see filmmaking of this caliber that’s stylish, yet doesn’t live by any tricks or conceits.
The tag line is “34 Years In Prison – 30 In Solitary – Loving Every Minute,” and that pretty much nails it. The movie is, in many ways, a picture about identity or a lack thereof and about a batshit madman who feels more at home in prison and being beat silly than he does anywhere on earth. The film is the true story of notorious British prisoner Michael Peterson (played with ruthless wonderful abandon by Tom Hardy) who was jailed on seven year stint for arm robbery. But instead of quietly doing his time, Peterson (who dubbed himself Charlie Bronson) went psychotic and found his calling in prison as wild shit-disturber with a sado-masochistic need for ritualistic weekly beatings which led to a 34-year in jail which is still going.
“Bronson” is so electric, so out-there and wicked it’s been gaining major attention in the film world. The Danish Refn is already known for his solid, “Pusher” trilogy, but after “Bronson,” starting making headway on the film festival circuit Hollywood seems to have come a knockin’ and the director has already been tapped to potentially direct Keanu Reeves in a Jekyll and Hyde film. Hardy’s disturbing, yet magnetic performance has obviously also turned heads too. He was cast by Christopher Nolan for a role in, “Inception,” but of course no one really knows what that role is.
Here’s the synopsis:
The notorious life of the UK’s “most violent prisoner” serves as the subject of Pusher Trilogy director Nicolas Winding Refn’s brutal biopic. Born Michael Peterson but later renamed by his fight promoter, Charles Bronson’s sole ambition in life was to become famous. Surmising that the fastest means of accomplishing his goal with such limited opportunities was to cultivate a stylized persona as a hardened criminal, the ambitious do-badder embraced a desperate existence of extreme savagery. But who is the real man behind the warped persona? Seeing as how twenty-eight of Bronson’s thirty-four years behind bars were spent in solitary confinement, that’s a difficult question to answer. The terror of the legend comes to vivid life, however, as director Refn explores the twisted alternate reality created by Bronson, and highlights precisely how the controversial criminal staged himself within that anarchistic world
Here’s the U.K. version of the trailer. “Bronson” hits theaters in limited release on September 25 via Magnet/Magnolia pictures. The release is bound to be small, but make sure you go out of your way to find it when it eventually hits your town. Maybe this will inspire us to finally write a proper review. We’d definitely give the film an A grade. Poster via Vulture.