Stunt Movie Swagger

this era of stunt performances (putty-nosed nicole kidman in the hours, philip seymour hoffman's mack-truck subtlety in capote, charlize theron's monstrousness in monster) has also fashioned the stunt movie. the newest example of this show-off's genre is bronson by nicolas winding refn, the danish director who previously perpetrated the overwrought pusher trilogy.

rather than a straightforward biography of englishman michael peterson, aka charles bronson, a petty thug who in 1974 began his 34-year prison sentence and became infamous as britain's most violent inmate, refn sensationalizes peterson's pathetic life story in a series of set pieces. refn's central attention-grabber gives peterson his own one-man-show-as if presenting his life in an onstage soliloquy before a west end audience-followed by stylized clockwork orange montages of youth violence, then road shows of bloody performances in various penal institutions and asylums as british authorities attempt to figure out peterson's incorrigible defiance. (one gratuitous scene choreographs peterson's medical sedation to the tune of the pet shop boys "it's a sin.") this typifies the stunt movie preference for grandiose film gimmicks over a focused psychological, chronological or sociological narrative.

it's similar to the over-directed method of fernando mierelles' city of god and sorrentino's il divo where notorious real-life circumstances are subjected to caricature-fancy reductions of morality and crisis into style. if add is a contemporary filmmakers' malady, this encourages the audiences to expect glib sensation rather than content. this decline already was apparent in refn's pusher trilogy, a crime saga about copenhagen's underworld modeled on the extended outrages of hbo's the sopranos but uncannily like the gaming phenomenon grand theft auto: refn's characters were types and his "drama" was simply composed of bloody, outrageous, nihilistic situations.

brutal as bronson is, it's never a cautionary tale about prison reform like jules dassin's 1947 brute force. its stunt movie premise no doubt developed out of the confused manipulations of television drama: refn revs up each stage of peterson's life as if just coming back from a commercial break. (refn colorizes and stylizes prison like someone who never spent time there.) this mood shifting reveals that, essentially, the stunt movie genre lets filmmakers of an exploitation bent use serious topics merely to indulge artistic pretenses.

strange that this form of aesthetic escapism should-pardon the expression-imprison a superb actor. tom hardy plays peterson so startlingly well i need to put space between the artifice of refn's stunt movie techniques and the integrity of hardy's commitment. also, there should be no mistaking kidman, hoffman and theron's hammy theatrics with hardy's prodigious performance. he gives peterson rip-snorting vehemence; instead of 1970s punk rebellion, his resentment is compacted with a deranged sense of class-the criminal's instinct to belong that makes his fight against authority express an ironic middle-class desire.

"i knew i was made for better things. i had a calling," peterson brags, but refn's conceit ignores this delusion. hardy goes way past the film's brief reference to charles bronson (star of the action/vigilante film death wish the year peterson was incarcerated). the bronson thing is very idiosyncratic-an unexplained pop-culture connection like tarantino's ludicrous nazi landa in inglourious basterds. but it comes together when peterson boasts, "prison was finally a place where i could sharpen my skills, hone my tools." through hardy's own range of skills-street toughness, theatrical posh, pub vulgarity, plus psychopathic menace and extreme self-denial when he goes commando-the peterson/bronson amalgam creates the most convincing-yet screen composite of a british badass.

eric bana's tour de force as a blood-soaked, self-dramatizing convict in the australian stunt movie chopper was focused in realism. but where bana played a bearish brute, hardy's bulked up-ripped like edward norton in american history x-to display a knowing form of narcissistic hyper-masculinity: balding with nearly a handlebar mustache (not a skinhead), he's always iconographic. his image suggests a bull-necked version of roger livesey in the life and times of col. blimp. there's even an animated sequence where peterson's doodled self-portraits turn the glorious patriotic blimp legend inside out.

these associations prove that hardy's portrayal is more than a real-life impersonation of bronson; it realizes the stunt movie opportunity to present an actor's thoroughly romantic admiration of force. hardy embellishes peterson/bronson with very precise, creative choices: olivier here; finney there; some of malcolm mcdowell's alex; even jack nicholson's clown-white joker makeup; and in an outrageous final jest, peterson taunts a guard by stripping and covering himself in either axle grease or othello-like blackface.

bronson isn't the follow-up movie expected from hardy's charming rocknrolla character handsome bob, a signal performance like all in rocknrolla. yet guy ritchie's matured scrutiny of gangsterism and its relationship to british social and literary history is reflected in the fact that hardy seems to analyze the oddity of self-consciousness criminality and fame throughout bronson. "all my life i wanted to be famous," peterson yearns, just like the misguided kid in the smiths' "you just haven't earned it yet, baby." hardy makes this enlightening association possible because he brings such encyclopedic swagger to refn's stunt.

-- bronson directed by nicolas winding refn runtime: 92 min.