Bron­son

“You’re a very sweet man, Char­lie,” says Irene (Kel­ly Adams), ​“but you’ve got no ambi­tion.” It’s hard to know whether to agree or dis­agree, for Char­lie (Tom Hardy) may be blessed with a rogu­ish grin and a charis­mat­ic naïveté, but he is also ​‘Britain’s most vio­lent pris­on­er’, a pugna­cious pow­der keg of a con who seizes any oppor­tu­ni­ty to brawl with the screws. As for ambi­tion, he has that in spades, but it is ambi­tion of a kind that, in keep­ing with these celebri­ty-obsessed times, nev­er seems to get beyond mere­ly want­i­ng to be famous.

Char­lie finds the path to this ​‘call­ing’ in prison, where his aggres­sion soon wins him the recog­ni­tion he has been crav­ing – and so he invents for him­self a par­tic­u­lar per­sona as a hard­man, adopt­ing the ​‘fight­ing name’ of Charles Bron­son (he was born Michael Peter­son), and repeat­ed­ly engi­neer­ing inci­dents that bring him into unwinnable con­flicts with his captors.

There have been many films about the prison expe­ri­ence, but Nico­las Wind­ing Refn’s man­nered biopic is the first to exam­ine its incar­cer­at­ed sub­ject not as a mon­ster or a vic­tim, but rather as an artist – and one who tru­ly suf­fers for his art, whether through reg­u­lar beat­ings or long stints in solitary.

Ever mind­ful of his image and its man­age­ment, Char­lie is allowed to fash­ion his own sto­ry, either in ​‘raw’ address­es to cam­era, or in full clown’s make-up on an imag­ined stage before an applaud­ing, tuxe­doed audi­ence. That this frac­tured nar­ra­tion of events, with all its camp bit-play­ers and sur­re­al flour­ish­es, is itself cast as just anoth­er piece of show­man­ship mere­ly under­lines the elu­sive­ness of the ​‘real’ Char­lie, a man masked by an actor’s name (and played by yet anoth­er actor). Hardy’s Bron­son is always, as he puts it, ​‘mak­ing a name’ for him­self, but isn’t so clear on the ques­tion of ​‘what as?’ And so, asked repeat­ed­ly by the prison war­den what it is that he wants, Char­lie seems unable (or at least unwill­ing) to answer.

It becomes increas­ing­ly clear, how­ev­er, that the per­for­mance itself is what con­sti­tutes the man, and our atten­tion is all that is need­ed to sus­tain him. With­out that, Char­lie is just anoth­er bat­tered and bruised fig­ure alone in a cage. Still, in a film clos­er to A Clock­work Orange or Blue Vel­vet than to Chop­per, bru­tal ultra­vi­o­lence and art-house odd­i­ty make for an arrest­ing mix, while it is impos­si­ble to take your eyes off Hardy’s intense serio-com­ic turn.