They just don’t make these kinds of movies anymore. Bronson is a delightful throwback to the nihilistic and wildly experimental 70s, when mavericks took over Hollywood and art-house films were the mainstream. Bronson also serves as a gut-punching antidote to Hollywood’s assembly line of disingenuous stories of false redemption, the biopic. I like to think of Bronson as an anti-biopic, much in the same vein as 24 Hour Party People and Auto Focus.

The subject in question is Charles Bronson, but not the mustached hero of Deathwish, though this particular character does sport an old-fashioned handlebar mustache himself. Charles Bronson, born Michael Peterson, has the dubious distinction of being “Britain’s most violent prisoner” and has served 34 years in various prisons and mental institutions. I cannot exaggerate the raw animal power of Tom Hardy’s performance, as he seamlessly fuses this beguiling and frustrating personality of half beast, half vaudeville entertainer.  For the entire film, Bronson is playing to an audience, presumably us. Indeed, his snarky, cynical, tired, and enraged narrations reminded me of twisted version Joel Gray from Carbaret.

Bronson leads us through his sordid life through a series of naturalistic and surreal vignettes, from the fateful day he knocked over a store for a £26.18 to his short-lived career as a bare knuckle boxer. Through it all, Bronson refuses to be tamed, no matter how many times life (and life’s prisons guards) pummel him. Seemingly addicted to violence, he keeps starting fights, taking hostages, and starting prison riots. He refers to his prison cell as a “hotel room” and after he gets thrown into a mental institution, he ruthlessly schemes to get himself back into prison.  

As Bronson explains his sordid, go nowhere life to a clearly entertained audience, we the real audience eventually realize that it is us, not Bronson, that is getting systematically deconstructed. Why is that we are so fascinated by criminals, and that it seems half our films center on their lives and exploits?  But Bronson refuses to give any easy, glib answers, such as “we crave the wild and free life” or “we are titillated by the forbidden.” There is nothing titillating or appealing about Bronson’s wretched life, and we’re left feeling as if we were gaping at a zoo animal.  Bronson is more than happy to accommodate us and play the animal, but regardless of his animal antics, he remains a man, and therefore remains tied to us.

Even the usual homoerotic overtones do not provide any clear signposts. The gay men that play the key roles in Bronson’s life are just as puzzled as we are about why Bronson does the things he does. They exert as much control over Bronson as the hapless prison guards, and one prison art teacher eventually discovers just how little he knows Bronson in the film’s spectacular finale. So no, this is not a tale of a man exploding because he’s in the closet. Even if Bronson were indeed gay, it would only be beside the point.

Shot in grim grey and brown colors, Bronson is a runaway freight train of a movie, and I can only wonder how director Nicolas Refn got that hardcore Method Actor performance out of Hardy.  It must have been an extremely tense set, but it was worth it. Bronson is not just a cinematic triumph; it’s a reminder of what we lost when we migrated back to formulaic action movies and traded in our honest anti-heroes for cartoonish and phony “heroes.”