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Rating: If Bronson's story had been adapted for the cinema in a Hollywood style, it would have turned out to be a mediocre commercial mess, a forgettable blockbuster within a few months. The film industry has managed to tell the story of men like Oyama (Fighter of the Wind) in a sterile way, so imagine how a standardized and conventional film could have been made about a subject as peculiar and anomalous as Michael Gordon Peterson, aka Charles Bronson. To do justice to this character, it took a visionary director, someone like Nicolas Winding Refn capable of courageously stepping out of conventional frameworks.
Bronson went down in history as the most violent prisoner in England, a man obsessed with the desire to become famous. His ambition to make a name for himself led him to unsuccessfully rob a post office, for which he was sentenced to seven years in prison but ended up serving over 35 years due to his furious battles with the guards. He is still in prison today, and it's unknown for how much longer he will remain there.
The film has been described as "The A Clockwork Orange of the twenty-first century," but this is merely a commercial slogan as, aside from the violence, which is also different in nature from Kubrick's work, the perspective, atmosphere, style, camera shots, and everything else have nothing in common with A Clockwork Orange.
In Bronson, the violence, both physical and psychological, is framed by a devastating nihilism that reigns supreme from the first to the last scene. Refn has left room for an underlying ambiguity by not providing any explicit motivation for the character's actions, as if there were something inscrutable even to Charles Bronson himself. This element is more marked in the second half of the film, where it's evident that even he didn't know what he wanted to achieve with his hostage-taking, which turns out to be acts of self-harm. The director wisely decided not to rationalize a subject that is inherently absurd and moreover to make it surreal, at times bordering on the dreamlike, a factor enhanced by the dark tones permeating the indoor settings. Memorable are the scenes of theatrical monologues in which the protagonist appears as a grotesque clown, ironically commenting on his own fate before an invisible audience that applauds his deeds. In the last scene, we see the guards closing the prison door as if they were lowering the curtain.
Tom Hardy as Bronson was brilliant, a role for which he prepared extensively both physically (gaining weight and muscle mass) and psychologically (by meeting the real Michael Peterson in prison).
In Italy, the localization was somewhat delayed, but at least the Italian version has no cuts, and the dubbing is good, although Hardy's voice is irreplaceable, and certain scenes stand out more in the original language (such as the one where Bronson serves tea to the guard).
In conclusion, Bronson is truly an excellent film with commendably creative direction, which does not focus on an excessive number of close-ups but always manages to highlight the setting and secondary characters. An honorable mention must also be made for the soundtrack.
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