Bronson

Nicolas Winding Refn – 2008 – England

I can’t say I know a lot about Nicolas Winding Refn except for having seen a few of his films.  I certainly don’t have a strong opinion about him like a lot of people seem to have.  I can say that I admired Bronson significantly more than any of his other films I’ve seen, and in fact I was completely caught up in it from beginning to end.  The ghost of Stanley Kubrick seems to be hovering over the proceedings, not haunting the film but bestowing his blessing upon it.  I detect this mostly in the joyously histrionic performances by the actors, especially Tom Hardy in a tour-de-force lead performance as life-long criminal and convict Michael Peterson, who since youth wants nothing more than to be famous and yet has no talent for much beyond violence.  This leads him – in between long stints in prison – to a career as an underground boxer known as ‘Charles Bronson,’ with the new name being chosen after someone suggests that he take on a name that has a similar feel to Charles Bronson’s.  Hardy’s performance is brave not because of the extreme things his character does but because by being so over-the-top, he risks criticism for chewing the scenery or swinging at the fences or whatever colorful metaphor applies .  But that kind of thing is done so badly so often that it really makes you appreciate how effective and memorable it is when it’s done right, as Hardy does here.  His antecedents are certainly George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove (1964) and Jack Nicholson in The Shining (1980), among other deranged performances in Kubrick films.  Concise, tight and unapologetic, without being exploitative, Refn’s Bronson is a not a biography of the man himself as much as a cinematic caricature; an abstract and parallel incarnation capturing the essence of the man.