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Tom Hardy plays the infamous brutal prisoner Charles Bronson |
Shining light on dark world of Bronson
BRONSON
Directed by Nicholas Winding Refn
Certificate 18
YOU have to hand it to Vertigo Films.
The Kentish Town company, who work from a warehouse office off Fortess Road, are behind Bronson. Released this week, it’s a bio-pic of Charles Bronson, the infamous prisoner who is still behind bars and has done nearly 30 years in solitary confinement.
Vertigo have a track record of producing no-frills British pictures. They were behind the incredible London to Brighton and another prison drama, The Escapist.
Both films, and now Bronson, have shown that London-based production companies can create a peculiar English sense of film without paying any lip-service to American film-making techniques. They find stories that reflect our society today, are relevant to the world we live in, and neither glorify nor demonise crime, disorder, violence and poverty.
Vertigo are simply making highly watchable stories, and director Winding Refn has created a surreal masterpiece – a study of brutality told through the eyes of an enthralling lead. Bronson is brought to life superbly by Tom Hardy.
“It’s 1974,” his growly voice informs us at the start. “A tough time to be growing up in England.”
And one of the major pluses of this film is the recreation of the decade that moulded Bronson. It is superb, from the interiors of his parents’ house and his temporary girlfriend’s flat, to the litter-strewn garages, the clothes, haircuts – the attention to detail is wonderful and gives Hardy the solid base needed to play out the psychopathic tendencies of the lead character.
He is fascinating to watch and you can’t help root for him, even when he is taking prison staff hostage and beating the hell out of anyone unfortunate enough to come close enough to receive a fist. His violence mimics the regime he is forced to live under. The Prison Service does not come out of this film kindly.
Born Michael Peterson, Bronson was renamed by a bare-knuckle fight promoter who he had met inside. When Bronson was released from his first stretch for armed robbery, he took to scrapping in draughty barns and sheds in the Essex countryside for petty cash. He was soon back behind bars.
We watch him become more institutionalised, and always ready to explode at unidentifiable slights. Yet we also learn Bronson has won awards for his artwork, and has written 11 books.
Although at 57 he has spent the vast majority of his life inside for violence, age has sapped the aggression. The gist is this: he had a penchant for a punch-up and was shockingly brutal, but the system that has held him has brutalised him further.
This premise adds another strand to what is at times a story told with an edge. Scary stuff. |
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