The casual physical brutality of "Britain's most notorious criminal," Michael Petersen a.k.a. "Charles Bronson," is depicted with unreserved commitment by impressive actor Tom Hardy. His performance is on par with Eric Bana's fantastic transformation in "Chopper" (2000).
Hardy embodies the post-"Silence of the Lambs" archetype of the psychologically deranged prisoner — capable of writing poetry, painting, and facing his captors only with extreme violence.
Director Nicolas Winding Refn wallows in fetishistic glee as he shows off the bodies of his male subjects engaged in the mano a mano battle rituals Bronson consistently instigates, even though (perhaps because) he loses every time.
Stylistically, "Bronson" sustains a masochistic tone against a Sisyphian diary of this serious criminal badass obsessed with hurting his guards.
Flashbacks reveal Bronson's troubled childhood and the crimes that landed him in the big house. The movie never comes together as much of a biopic, but does work as a darkly comic celebration of a dubious anti-hero.
A second cousin to Paolo Sorrentino's "Il Divo" (2008), "Bronson" shares that film's mechanical sense of ambivalent regard for its subject.
This may be first true "video nasty" of the year.
Rated R. 92 mins.
