Bronson | |
---|---|
![]() UK theatrical release poster | |
Directed by | Nicolas Winding Refn |
Written by |
|
Produced by |
|
Starring | Tom Hardy |
Cinematography | Larry Smith |
Edited by | Matthew Newman |
Music by | Johnny Jewel |
Production companies | Aramid Entertainment Str8jacket Creations EM Media 4DH Films Perfume Films |
Distributed by | Vertigo Films [1] |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 92 minutes [2] |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Budget | $230,000[ citation needed ] |
Box office | $2.3 million [1] |
Bronson is a 2008 British biographical [3] black comedy prison-drama film directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, based on a script written by Refn and Brock Norman Brock. The film stars Tom Hardy as Michael Peterson, known from 1987 as Charles Bronson. The film follows the life of this prisoner, considered Britain's most violent criminal, who has been responsible for a dozen or so cases of hostage taking while incarcerated. [4] He was given the name Charles Bronson by his fight promoter, for his bare-knuckle fighting years.
Born into a respectable middle-class family, Peterson became known as one of the United Kingdom's most dangerous prisoners. Because of his violence, Bronson was repeatedly put into isolation or solitary confinement, which may have contributed to his emotional problems.
The film begins with scenes from Peterson's delinquent early life which he narrates with self-deprecating humor. Initially he addresses the camera dressed in prison garb. Other times, he tells his tale in a vaudeville-style theatre with a live audience. The film's story unfolds as a surreal narrative of connected vignettes punctuated by vaudeville interludes.
He recounts episodes of crime and violence leading to his first prison sentence of seven years. At sentencing, his mother hopes he will be out in four but his violence in prison extends his sentence beyond seven years. He is sent to a psychiatric hospital, where he continues to rebel and is administered drugs which he claims make him physically weak. His first escape attempt is to walk sluggishly toward the exit, where he is waved back to a chair by a staffer. He decides to escape by earning a transfer back to prison and attempts to strangle a detainee that revealed himself to be a paedophile, but is apprehended before he can kill the man. He comments to the audience that despite all his prison time and solitary confinement, he has never killed anyone.
In the vaudeville theatre, he shows film footage of a rooftop protest during which he claims to have caused "tens of millions of pounds' damage". He credits this destruction with the government's decision to declare him "sane" and have him released. After a brief reunion with his parents, he sets off to see his predatory Uncle Jack. He is welcomed and reintroduced to an old prison mate who promises to set him up as a bare-knuckle boxer, and gives him the name Charles Bronson, after the American actor.
Bronson enjoys the violence and showmanship of bare-knuckle boxing. Not content with his meagre winnings, he ups the stakes by fighting two opponents at once and even fights a dog. He proposes to a woman and steals a thousand-pound ring in the hope that she will marry him. She declines. After sixty-nine days of freedom, Bronson is sent back to jail.
He takes the prison librarian hostage and waits for reinforcements to arrive, alternately screaming at his hostage and peaceably enquiring after his family. When other guards arrive, he strips naked and forces the librarian to assist in applying his "body armor" of petroleum jelly, to make him harder to grab in the imminent brawl. After being restrained, he is warned by the prison governor that he will die inside if his behavior does not improve. Encouraged by a prison art teacher, who notices something special in his drawings, he becomes a model prisoner for a while, channeling his confusion and pain into vivid imagery of birds and grotesque creatures. When told that the art studio will be closing, Bronson attacks the teacher and holds him hostage.
While prison officials wait outside, he demands music be played. He paints his naked body black and ties the teacher to a post. He paints a moustache onto the teacher's face, forces an apple into his mouth and removes his hat and glasses to put on the teacher's head, making the teacher into a parody of a Magritte painting. After this human still-life has been arranged to his satisfaction, he accepts his fate, calling for the prison guards to burst in for yet another brawl, for which he will be sent back to solitary confinement.
For the role, Hardy had telephone conversations with Charles Bronson, before meeting him. Bronson was so impressed by how Hardy had managed to build up his physique for the role and how good he was at imitating him, that he shaved off his trademark moustache for it to be used as a prop for Hardy to wear in the film. [5] "I honestly believe nobody on the planet could play me as Tom did. He is more like me than I am", Bronson told The Times . [4] Filming was done in and around the St. Ann's and Sherwood districts of Nottingham, and Worksop and Welbeck Abbey in north Nottinghamshire. [6]
In a late 2009 interview with Michael Slenske of Interview magazine, Tom Hardy discussed the fitness routine he had developed to get in shape to play Bronson,
SLENSKE: But you were doing some crazy training for that too, like 2,500 push-ups a day? HARDY: No, Charlie does 2,500 push-ups a day, I didn't do that. I had to put on a lot of weight as quick as possible and I only had five weeks to do it, and a lot of that was fat. I ate everything. To be honest, I lost about 14 pounds of fat on this last film [ Warrior ] and gained 28 pounds of muscle. I was heavier than I was on Bronson. [7]
Bronson grossed $2,260,712 at the box office. [1]
Upon release, Bronson received positive reviews, with many praising Hardy's performance, the film's writing and direction, as well as the humour and the action sequences, though it was criticised for its violence. Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, gives the film an approval rating of 76% based on reviews from 82 critics, with an average rating of 6.6 out of 10 with the consensus "Undeniably gripping, Bronson forces the viewer to make some hard decisions about where the line between art and exploitation lies." [8] Metacritic gives the film a "generally favourable" average score of 71 out of 100 based on 22 reviews. [9]
Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four and praised the decision not to attempt to rationalise and explain Bronson's behaviour, stating in his review:
"I suppose, after all, Nicolas Winding Refn, the director and co-writer of Bronson, was wise to leave out any sort of an explanation. Can you imagine how you'd cringe if the film ended in a flashback of little Mickey undergoing childhood trauma? There is some human behavior beyond our ability to comprehend. I was reading a theory the other day that a few people just happen to be pure evil. I'm afraid I believe it. They lack any conscience, any sense of pity or empathy for their victims. But Bronson is his own victim. How do you figure that?" [10]
Bronson was not initially allowed to view the film, but had said that if his mother liked it, he was sure he would as well. According to Refn's DVD audio commentary, his mother said she loved it. On 15 November 2011, he was granted permission to view it. Describing it as "theatrical, creative, and brilliant", Bronson heaped praise upon Hardy, but disagreed on the implied distance between himself and his father, and the portrayal of Paul Edmunds, a former prisoner and nightclub owner (portrayed in the film by Matt King as Paul Daniels) as "a bit of a ponce". [11]
Bronson challenged his own family's reaction to the portrayal of his Uncle Jack, stating that he "loved" it, as would Jack himself. Bronson's trust in Hardy's acting grew such that once he had seen the film, he said, "If I were to die in jail then at least I live on through Britain's No 1 actor". [12] Bronson was originally displeased with the choice of Hardy as the star, but during their first meeting in person, Hardy assured him that he would "fix it". [13]
Robert Franklin Stroud, known as the "Birdman of Alcatraz", was a convicted murderer, American federal prisoner and author who has been cited as one of the most notorious criminals in the United States. During his time at Leavenworth Penitentiary, he reared and sold birds and became a respected ornithologist. From 1942 to 1959, he was incarcerated at Alcatraz, where regulations did not allow him to keep birds. Stroud was never released from the federal prison system; he was imprisoned from 1909 to his death in 1963.
Solitary confinement is a form of imprisonment in which an incarcerated person lives in a single cell with little or no contact with other people. It is a punitive tool used within the prison system to discipline or separate incarcerated individuals who are considered to be security risks to other incarcerated individuals or prison staff, as well as those who violate facility rules or are deemed disruptive. However, it can also be used as protective custody for incarcerated individuals whose safety is threatened by other prisoners. This is employed to separate them from the general prison population and prevent injury or death.
Charles Arthur Salvador, formerly Charles Ali Ahmed, born Michael Gordon Peterson on 6 December 1952, better known by his professional name of Charles Bronson, is a British criminal, with a violent and notorious life as a prisoner. He has spent periods detained in the Rampton, Broadmoor, and Ashworth high-security psychiatric hospitals.
Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP) is a supermax prison facility in Crescent City, California. The 275-acre (111 ha) prison takes its name from a shallow bay on the Pacific coast, about 2 mi (3.2 km) to the west.
Das Experiment is a 2001 German drama thriller film directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel. It is based on Mario Giordano's novel Black Box and deals with a social experiment which resembles Philip Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment of 1971.
Edward Thomas Hardy is an English actor, producer, and screenwriter. After studying acting at the Drama Centre London, he made his film debut in Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down (2001). He had supporting roles in Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) and RocknRolla (2008), and went on to star in Bronson (2008), Warrior (2011), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), Lawless (2012), This Means War (2012), and Locke (2013). In 2015, he starred as "Mad" Max Rockatansky in Mad Max: Fury Road and both Kray twins in Legend, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Revenant. He has appeared in three Christopher Nolan films: Inception (2010), The Dark Knight Rises (2012) as Bane, and Dunkirk (2017). He has since starred as Eddie Brock/Venom in the film Venom and its 2021 sequel Venom: Let There Be Carnage. He also portrayed Al Capone in the film Capone (2020).
Pusher is a 1996 Danish crime thriller film co-written and directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, in his film debut. A commercial success considered to be influential in Danish film history, it marked Mads Mikkelsen's film debut.
Brute Force is a 1947 American crime film noir directed by Jules Dassin, from a screenplay by Richard Brooks with cinematography by William H. Daniels. It stars Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, Charles Bickford and Yvonne De Carlo.
Thomas Bushell was a convict transported to Western Australia. He was hanged in 1865 after attacking a warder.
Brubaker is a 1980 American prison drama film directed by Stuart Rosenberg. It stars Robert Redford as a newly arrived prison warden, Henry Brubaker, who attempts to clean up a corrupt and violent penal system. The screenplay by W. D. Richter is a fictionalized version of the 1969 book, Accomplices to the Crime: The Arkansas Prison Scandal by Tom Murton and Joe Hyams, detailing Murton's uncovering of the 1967 prison scandal.
Pardon Us is a 1931 American pre-Code Laurel and Hardy film. It was the duo's first starring feature-length comedy film, produced by Hal Roach and Stan Laurel, directed by James Parrott, and originally distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1931.
Thomas Edward Silverstein was an American criminal who spent the last 42 years of his life in prison after being convicted of four separate murders while imprisoned for armed robbery, one of which was overturned. Silverstein spent the last 36 years of his life in solitary confinement for killing corrections officer Merle Clutts at the Marion Penitentiary in Illinois. Prison authorities described him as a brutal killer and a former leader of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang. Silverstein maintained that the dehumanizing conditions inside the prison system contributed to the three murders he committed. He was the longest-held prisoner in solitary confinement within the Bureau of Prisons at the time of his death. Correctional officers refused to talk to Silverstein out of respect for Clutts.
The Angola Three are three African-American former prison inmates who were held for decades in solitary confinement while imprisoned at Louisiana State Penitentiary. The latter two were indicted in April 1972 for the killing of a prison corrections officer; they were convicted in January 1974. Wallace and Woodfox served more than 40 years each in solitary, the "longest period of solitary confinement in American prison history".
Nicolas Winding Refn is a Danish film director, screenwriter, and producer.
Henri Theodore Young was an American convicted bank robber and murderer who, while serving one of a series of prison terms, attempted to escape from Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary with four other inmates in 1939. During the escape attempt two inmates, Dale Stamphill and Arthur "Doc" Barker, were shot, the latter fatally. All survivors were quickly recaptured. Two of the men, Young and Rufus McCain, were sentenced to solitary confinement and served the terms at Alcatraz for a period of three years. Eleven days after re-entering the Alcatraz general prison population in 1942, Young murdered McCain.
Violent City is a 1970 crime thriller film directed by Sergio Sollima from a screenplay co-written with Lina Wertmüller, starring Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland, and Telly Savalas. Bronson plays a former hitman framed by a former boss and left for dead. He seeks revenge, but realizes his real enemy may be closer than he thinks. The Italian-French co-production was filmed in New Orleans, the U.S Virgin Islands, and Cinecittà Studios in Rome.
Drive is a 2011 American action drama film directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. The screenplay, written by Hossein Amini, is based on James Sallis's 2005 novel of the same name. The film stars Ryan Gosling as an unnamed Hollywood stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway driver. He quickly grows fond of his neighbor, Irene, and her young son, Benicio. When her debt-ridden husband, Standard, is released from prison, the two men take part in what turns out to be a botched million-dollar heist that endangers the lives of everyone involved. The film co-stars Bryan Cranston, Christina Hendricks, Ron Perlman, and Albert Brooks.
A prisoner is a person who is deprived of liberty against their will. This can be by confinement or captivity in a prison, or physical restraint. The term usually applies to one serving a sentence in prison.
Only God Forgives is a 2013 action film written and directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and stars Ryan Gosling, Kristin Scott Thomas and Vithaya Pansringarm. It was shot on location in Bangkok, Thailand, and as with the director's earlier film Drive it was also dedicated to Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky. The film competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.
Screwed is a 2011 British crime drama film directed by Reg Traviss and starring James D'Arcy, Frank Harper, David Hayman, Cal MacAninch, Jamie Foreman and Noel Clarke. It is based on Ronnie Thompson's nonfiction book Screwed: The Truth About Life as a Prison Officer.