Bronson

At the center of this decidedly unbalanced film biography is a wildly over-the-top performance by Tom Hardy, who plays Michael Peterson, an ultra-violent British miscreant who was arrested as a young man for a relatively minor post office robbery, sentenced to seven years in prison, and wound up stretching his incarceration to a life term due to extensive outbursts of violence while confined, and pathological behavior during a pair of misguided attempts to reintegrate him into society. Peterson, who renamed himself after actor Charles Bronson, has been a penal system nightmare—even a lengthy period in solitary confinement failed to break him of his horrible habits. The buffed-up Hardy brilliantly embodies Peterson/Bronson's brutality and hostility, creating an extraordinarily vicious force of energy that constantly overpowers his environment. Unfortunately, filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn takes an artsy approach to telling the story, interrupting the drama with fantasy scenes that imagine the prisoner dressed in a tuxedo and theatrical makeup while delivering an autobiographical standup routine to an appreciative audience. At other times, the film borrows too heavily from A Clockwork Orange by staging the violent sequences against a classical musical score. Ultimately, Bronson never deciphers the reasons that drove its subject to such abhorrent and, ultimately, self-destructive behavior. Still, on the strength of Hardy's performance, this should be considered a strong optional purchase. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include a “making-of” featurette (16 min.), behind-the-scenes footage (12 min.), an interview with director Nicholas Winding Refn (15 min.), an interview with star Tom Hardy (23 min.), an interview with costar Matt King (10 min.), a training featurette with Hardy (6 min.), “Charles Bronson Monologues” (17 min.), and trailers. Bottom line: a fine extras package for an uneven film.] (P. Hall)