First Review
Hey Harry,
It's been a while since I've even had anything for you. I think the last thing I sent you was a review of Kung Fu Hustle from Sundance. Anyway, I hit up a few films at the fest this year and thought I would give you my thoughts on them. FIrst off here is a review of Bronson.
I'm not going to bother with a blow-by-blow of all the major plot points or anything like that because if you really want to know about the life of Michael Gordon Peterson aka Charlie Bronson, you can just read about it on Wikipedia or something. Instead I'll let you in on the important parts of THIS film, which isn't really a comprehensive list of his life's events, it's more of a riff on who this man might be.
The most interesting thing about this film is the style in which they chose to portray "Britain's most violent criminal". It's a comedy... I think. the best way to describe it is... well, imagine if Napoleon Dynamite grew up and turned into a psychotic bare knuckled boxer that enjoyed beating the crap out of cops. That sounds like a joke but I'm dead serious about it. The style and bizarre, quirky
humor reminded me A LOT of Napoleon's sense of humor. And there is some really funny shit in there. Charlie even turns to art at one point and has his own disturbing versions of the Liger. But I digress.
THE GOOD: Tom Hardy is absolutely, blow-the-doors-off, call-your-mother, clean-your-pants-out, awesome. I don't know much about the real Charlie Bronson, but Hardy's version of him is so entertaining that I will freely dive right into anything that he is in from this point on. He's hilarious, but also scary and imposing and brutal enough to make Vinnie Jones cry like a little girl. He really is that good and I can't wait to see him in any other role. Also really good: the music. Some great 80's stuff.
THE NOT SO GOOD: I was not a fan of the structure. There is really two forms of storytelling in this film. First is the dramatic representation of his life, fairly standard with a little dialogue (but not much really), that is told mostly through narraration by Charlie himself. Sometimes choosing a
voice over for exposition is the easy way out for a writer, but that really didn't bother me in this case. The second form was Charlie Bronson actually standing up on stage telling his life story to an audience, sometimes dressed as a clown. This is clearly a representation of the inner workings of his mind and his desire to be known and to entertain, but it was used a little too much and the story
suffered because of it. Any screenwriter will cringe at the words "show me don't tell me" but in this case that's exactly what is wrong. At one point Charlie stands on stage singing a song while file footage of his rooftop siege of Broadmoor asylum for the criminally insane plays out on a screen next to him. It felt to me like they were really glossing over an extremely interesting section of his life.
Something that I would have loved to see play out dramatically. I'm sure it was done mostly because of
budgetary restrictions since he caused 70,000 pounds of damage to the facility. And like I said this is not a straight up biography so some may disagree with me about the effectiveness of the technique.
Overall though, I thought it was a great film that is worth seeing if only for Tom Hardy's work. I give it an 8 out of 10.
I'll be sending you reviews of Black Dynamite and The Informers soon as well.
A-Bone