A stylised, in-yer-face exercise in screen violence that recalls Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange in its aggressive theatricality and the gloating offensiveness of its protagonist, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson stormed its way around the world’s festival circuits last year. It’s been both denounced and lauded, and at last year’s Sydney Film Festival, to the horror of gentler souls, it carried off the jury’s hefty cash prize. Whether you’re mesmerised or cowering in your seat, you’re bound to agree that actor Tom Hardy is astounding as the ultimate Brit bad-ass.
The film is ‘inspired’ by Michael Petersen (aka Charles Bronson), who was given seven years for a post office robbery (during which he got away with less than £30 and no one was hurt) and has now, at the age of 57, spent 35 years in prison, 30 of them in solitary thanks to his proud record of hostage-taking and assault. A regular fixture in the UK tabloids, he has won awards for poetry and art but, if this viciously gleeful movie is to be believed, his natural born mode of self-expression is hard-out, body slamming violence – given and received.

“Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn’s baroque biopic – simply titled Bronson – is a Molotov cocktail of virtuoso filmmaking and fierce violence that makes you feel as if you’ve gone nine rounds with its subject. The director of the Pusher trilogy wears a variety of influences on his sleeve... but it’s Kubrick’s book of distancing tricks that gets pilfered to jaw-dropping effect here: impeccable compositions, gliding tracking shots, horrific mayhem set to stately classical music, narration filled with irony that’s coagulated like yesterday’s puddle of blood...
What Tom Hardy does with the role of Bronson is nothing short of awesome... this is the sort of immersive, supernova acting that establishes fearsome reputations. Built like a 19th century pugilist as imagined by Tom of Finland, Hardy’s hard man is a physical terror, all swinging arms and bat-shit-crazy grins... The director turns the story into a stylish thrill ride. Hardy, however, is the one who injects this aria of demented determinism with a palpable sense of danger.” — David Fear, Time Out New York