“In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.” — Andy Warhol
By now, everyone should be familiar with this quote made famous by the pop artist Andy Warhol and most all of us can probably relate to it’s meaning in one way or another. The variable in this prediction is for what shall each person be famous. When Warhol uttered these words, his meaning was most likely related to the rapidly increasing popularity and accessibility to new media such as television, making it possible for anyone to get face time in front of hundreds, thousands or even millions of people.
‘Bronson’ is based on a true story about Michael Peterson, later known for his self-adopted unofficial fighting name Charlie Bronson. Mickey, as those closest to him call him, is a man who knows he is destined for greatness of some kind and he’s known since he was a child. What exactly that greatness is, however, is precisely the obstacle that Mickey struggles to overcome as a young man living in England in the 1970s. That is, of course, until he realized he had the heart and drive (and perhaps even the marbles) to be a fighter.
Mickey should not be mistaken for a professional fighter. During a particularly rough period in his adult youth, Mickey attempted to convince his intimate companion to marry him with a massive stolen diamond ring, only to find himself put down by his girl and put away by the law for having stolen the ring. This new chapter in Mickey’s life turns out to be a revelation for him as he quickly discovers that serving 4-7 years in prison is a long time and gives him lots of time to pursue his dream of greatness.
Once inside, Mickey decides he likes prison and refers to his cell as his hotel room. Mickey determines his time behind bars is his time to shine, creating for himself the fame and reputation as Britain’s most violent criminal. This endeavor plays out perfectly as he is privileged with a captive audience that is highly receptive to the type of performance that Mickey has set out to provide. In a way only Mickey could truly appreciate, his world has come together and allowed him the destiny he’s sought since childhood.
The strapping young Mickey Peterson is given a fascinating performance by Tom Hardy (RocknRolla) that is equally humorous, disturbing and insightful. Director Nicholas Winding Refn manages to construct an intensely textural sensory interpretation of the man known as Charlie Bronson, based on Brock Norman Brock’s writing. The film delves into both the reality and the fantasy of the man and the world he created in his mind that spilled into the real world with pint after pint of blood and pain.
Later in Mickey’s blood-soaked circus of chaos and carnage, he finds himself losing the control and power of manipulation he has come to adore as the penal system of England loses patience and ideas for how best to contain and control the beast known as Bronson. After repeated attempts to break his will through relocation and time spent in solitary confinement, Mickey is transfered to an asylum for the criminally insane, abruptly removing him from his element and nearly destroys his strong will.
‘Bronson’ is a film clearly influenced by the late Stanley Kubrick’s infamous cinematic ode to violence and the society that creates it, and in that same way is what ‘Bronson’ attempts to convey in the extensively violent telling of Mickey Peterson. The movie is an amazing audio-visual experience that has been meticulously pieced together from Refn’s precise cinematic blueprints. This may all sound very familiar to those serious film buffs that appreciate Kubrick’s work, but Refn manages to make this film his own despite the influence.
Once again comparing ‘Bronson’ to ‘A Clockwork Orange’, powerful classical music plays a significant role in the telling of Peterson’s story and the illustration of his mind and his personality. Peterson is not an unintelligent man, but merely focuses his energy on achieving the goal at hand. Time after time, Peterson insists on being a violent presence, provoking the guards at every chance, consequently resulting in his unimaginable amount of time spent in solitary confinement. Peterson has spent 34 years in prison without having ever killed a single person, 30 of those years were spent in solitary confinement.
In a very strange way, ‘Bronson’ depicts the notion of hope and the power of staying true to one’s dreams, even if they are incredibly self-destructive and detrimental to society. ‘Bronson’ is a movie that takes the yin and the yang of life and sticks it in a giant blender, creating a puree that blurs what is good and bad, right and wrong, leaving only the ultra-violent vaudevillian version of the world that exists through Peterson’s crimson-colored glasses.
The movie as a whole is not quite perfect, but it does manage to come quite close. The only truly obvious flaw in ‘Bronson’ is it’s relative lack of a traditional three-act story. The plot is there and is easy enough to follow, but more time is spent on developing the idea of Charlie Bronson than is spent on developing the character himself and his underlying motivations. Aside from this one area of concern, ‘Bronson’ is a breath-taking piece of cinema. Breath-taking not in it’s beauty, although Larry Smith’s cinematography is outstanding, but more like a gut punch that takes your breath away, leaving you utterly flabbergasted that what just occurred actually did occur in some version of real life.
