Bronson

Has this ever happened to you? You're on a bus or a train, maybe long distance,
and someone sits down across from you, and decides to tell you his life story.
And you nod, and smile, and make encouraging noises in the right places,
because the guy is a *loon*.

Well, this is the movie version of that experience.

Tom Hardy plays Michael Peterson, AKA Charles Bronson, who is apparently
Britain's most violent criminal. He's spent a total of about four months *out*
of prison since 1974, and has a history of violence and hostage taking. This
much we know for sure.

The film is a sort of illustrated monologue; Bronson appears on stage,
narrating his life, and it's clear that the recollections are his version of
events and that the stage is in his own head, complete with adoring audience.
So it's not clear throughout whether anything is true, true-as-Bronson-tells-it
or fictions made up for the film. The whole thing is a confusing stream of
consciousness, a disjointed series of tales from Bronson's life. It's hard to
discern what point, if any, there is to his life, or whether he even knows. Or
cares.

So, this isn't so much a story so much as a character portrait, and a
performance, and a hell of a performance it is. You'll often find yourself
thinking "where on earth is this going?" but not in a bad sense. It's like a
rollercoaster ride that constantly smacks you in the face and calls you a c#nt.
I heard the other day that the difference between truth and fiction is that
fiction has to make sense. That's certainly apt here.