DVD Voice

I’m not entirely sure how this one made it into my NetFlix queue. I think it was one of those days where I saw the title, thought it looked interested but tossed it to the top of my queue so I could look at it closer at home to decide if I wanted to see it or not. I forget to take things out…

This movie, Bronson, is about Britain’s most notorious criminal, Charles Bronson or Michael Peterson. The actor, Tom Hardy, does a rather intense job as Bronson. But given that the real life Charles Bronson has spent over 36 years in jail (and 30 of that in solitary!) most of it is shot in a prison environment. There is a lot of violence and profanity. It is one of those films that makes you appalled at how people can be so violent. He just didn’t make sense!

In the traditional caper or crime movie, you have the scheme they try, and you see the police closing in, etc and you have some suspense. This movie, he’s sent away very early on in the story part of the film for an armed robbery of a post office and he pretty much stays in prison until he gets out almost 20 years later and stays out for 69 days before he’s back in.

The film intersperses him on stage in front of an audience being a famous celebrity and entertaining and some of the other parts of the movie move rather slow. The music choices, what sounded like symphony and opera music was ironically mismatched to the subject matter.

As for the action and fight scenes – a few of those scenes are “ok” but most of them are not as hard hitting as they could be and usually involve multiple prison guards surrounding and eventually beating on him. Far better action movies out there.

Rated R. 92 minutes (1 hour 32 minutes). Profanity – lots and lots of profanity. Nudity – there is a scene with a topless stripper, it was nice, and some other scantily clad females but given this is a prison movie, there are frequent nude prisoner scenes as he prepares to fight the guards and you can sadly see every bit of him you might ever care to. Or you can look away or better yet, not look at this movie at all!