Michael Gordon Petersen was born into British middle-class respectability in 1952. Mum and Dad ran the Conservative club in Aberystwyth, Uncle and Auntie were the local Mayor and Mayoress. A bright, articulate chap, as a teen he fell in with a Bad Crowd and became a bareknuckle boxer. In 1974, he was arrested for stealing £24.18 in a bungled post office hold-up. He has been detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure ever since, spending most of his ongoing prison sentence in solitary confinement. Nicknamed Charles Bronson after the Mongolian-American Death Wish actor, he is known, in prurient tabloid circles, as Britain’s Most Violent Prisoner.
The tag defies logic; an outsider artist, a frequent contributor to children’s animal charities and the author of five books, Charles Bronson has never killed anyone.
Nicolas Winding Refn, the reliably hardcore Danish director behind the Pusher trilogy, turns his attention to this bizarre travesty of justice with an artist‘s gaze. This is a not a campaigning film. This is a rush of blood to the head.
The biographical details are startling enough. Mr. Bronson’s confinement has been punctuated by confrontations with the authorities, protests and occasional hostage takings. (Significantly, these outbursts have invariably fizzled out with curveball demands – two burgers, an inflatable doll, a cup of tea – or flirtations with self-harm.)
Refn presents the facts in grand operatic terms. A naked, painted Charlie takes on an army of his captors to the strains of Puccini. Cleverly, conversely, the filmmaker slowly boxes and isolates his subject. Inner monologues are delivered, vaudeville style, to a theatre of cardboard cut-outs and canned laughter. As our protagonist’s cages get smaller and smaller, claustrophobic framing suggests that the walls are also closing in on the unsuspecting viewer.
Tom Hardy, a remarkable and criminally unsung actor (Star Trek: Nemesis, Rocknrolla), does extraordinary work realising Mr. Bronson’s transformation from Well Brought Up Boy into hardened criminal. It’s a discombobulating metamorphosis to behold. Demonstrating precisely the sort of commitment and volatility that made Daniel Day Lewis’ Daniel Plainview so cruelly mesmerising, watching Mr. Hardy, one curls into the seat and vows to make no sudden movements.
Unpredictable, menacing, charismatic, terrifying and frequently hilarious, his performance begs questions without ever asking them. Is Charles Bronson not the victim of a psychopathic system? Does our hero need help or freedom? Would 30 years in solitary confinement be allowed in Guantanamo Bay?
In keeping with the man who inspired it, Bronson will provoke heated debate and moral aggravation for liberals. It’s A Clockwork Orange without the happy ending. It’s This Year’s Chopper. But bigger and meaner.