Bronson reviewed
[Bronson opens in limited release today. It's also one of the films we're looking for your webcam reviews for The Rotten Tomatoes Show. See the film, submit a review and you could get $100 if we use you next Thursday night.]
The essential point made repeatedly through Nicolas Windin Refn's Bronson is simple: find what you love and never let it go. Or, in the case of Michael Gordon Peterson, to channel that love into unbridled agression and transcend himself.
After all, he is "Britain's most expensive prisoner" and the facts about his life have nicely settled into larger-than-life myth. And this, according to Refn, is how to view such a man.
Prior to being Bronson, Petersen is nothing more than a brute. But he is a brute in search of purpose and meaning. Tom Hardy pulls off this exquisitly complicated role that always threatens to border on parody. Yet Hardy's lashing into the viewer in the first half's Stage segways are violent reminders to never fully trust him.
The film itself begins with Bronson as narrator, pulling the viewer down into his absurdist world that is a mixture of caberet and pit-fighting. But from there it is a history according to Bronson that is mirred in the gallows. Prison is the only answer for him when it comes to what he wants out of life.
Refn and Hardy compliment each other constantly. Where Refn keeps the camer locked, Hardy paces like a caged animal filled with intensity that he struggles to contain. The film takes a minor change in the second act, as Hardy's narration is dropped in favor of mezmerizing sets and odes to The Pet Shop Boys.
The mistake many can make with this film is the implication we're supposed to like the real Bronson. You're not.
Refn and Hardy have made the Boogeyman real and it is incredible to watch the entire evolution from myth to broken piece of meat forever stuck in a cage.
-John Lichman
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- tags:
- movie review, tom hardy, bronson, Nicolas Winding Refn
