Review of Bronson (2009) by Michael Y — 31 Aug 2011

Bronson is a rough and brutal biopic. This is no tale of motives, not a look into why this person is the way he is, not a life lession to be learned. Bronson is a tale of brutal force and madness told in the most stylish way possible.

Michael Peterson lived a normal life with loving respectable parents. He was married and had a son. They didn't have lots of money so Michael decided to rob a post office. He was sentenced to 7 years in prison, with a possibility of only 4. It isn't until Michael is locked in prison that he finds his true self. Over the years Michael Peterson's sentence would be extended and he would spend years in solitary confindment for being "Britian's most violent criminal". This is the tale of one man's freedom and art in prison as he becomes his alter ego: Charles Bronson. Tom Hardy gives a powerful and intense performance as Michael "Charles Bronson" Peterson, being both mannered, calm, controled and out-of control. Hardy goes all out (at a lot of times even fully naked) and draws the fine line between sanity and insanity, moral and immoral, artist and lunatic. My biggest problem though is that at the end of the movie, there really isn't anything to be learned from it all.

Nicolas Winding Refn is a small time director who does give his movies an artistic kick to them, though not that much. When I heard that Bronson was like a Kubrick movie I couldn't understand or believe. When I finally watched Bronson, I understood. Bronson is like if Stanley Kubrick went bat shit crazy with A Clockwork Orange. And it did remind me a little of A Clockwork Orange. This movie is an extremely stylish movie. If you're going to make a movie that has little moral value to be learned, might as well make it with as much creativity as possible. That's exactly what you'll see here. The narrative is creativly structured, the lighting of every scene is like a work of art, the camera angles and wonderful, the editing is incredible and the music through the entire movie pops out and raises the intensity of every scene with either classical music or more modern, electronic sounds. This movie was definitely not made half asked. Refn does an extremely great job directing this movie, giving every scene life, beauty and horror.

Most critics would have liked a more thorough look into Charles Bronson's personality to resolve the story with meaning and feeling. I wouldn't have mind seeing that myself. But then again, maybe that is what the movie is all about. Life seems to be full of unexplainable events. Bronson is a tale of humanity at its most wild and least explainable. We cannot understand why Charles Bronson does what he does. Only Charles Bronson knows that, and it makes perfect sense to him.