Bronson

In 1974, a hot-headed 19 year old named Michael Peterson decided he wanted to make a name for himself and so, with a homemade sawn-off shotgun and a head full of dreams he attempted to rob a post office. Swiftly apprehended and originally sentenced to 7 years in jail, Peterson has subsequently been behind bars for 34 years, 30 of which have been spent in solitary confinement. During that time, Michael Petersen, the boy, faded away and ‘Charles Bronson,’ his superstar alter ego, took center stage… With the same brutal yet operatic flair he brought to his previous films, “The Pusher Trilogy, ” director Nicholas Winding Refn gets inside the mind of Bronson, and delivers not only a portrait of an artist bereft of an outlet, but also a scathing indictment of celebrity culture. Tom Hardy plays the title character with disturbing intensity who physically transformed himself for the role. Hardy said, “The opportunity to play such a complex and tormented real-life character was a unique challenge for me, and one that required a great level of commitment and understanding.” Director Nicolas Winding Refn says about his new film, “It is Bronson’s unending thirst for celebrity that has kept in prison for so long. And it was this particular aspect of his personality that we tried to capture in the film.” (Source)

The real-life story of infamous British prisoner Charles Bronson, whose bad behavior has had him imprisoned for more than three decades, most of it in solitary confinement. (Source)

The notorious life of the U.K.'s "most violent prisoner" serves as the subject of Pusher Trilogy director Nicolas Winding Refn's brutal biopic. Born Michael Peterson but later renamed by his fight promoter, Charles Bronson's sole ambition in life was to become famous. Surmising that the fastest means of accomplishing his goal with such limited opportunities was to cultivate a stylized persona as a hardened criminal, the ambitious do-badder embraced a desperate existence of extreme savagery. But who is the real man behind the warped persona? Seeing as how 28 of Bronson's 34 years behind bars were spent in solitary confinement, that's a difficult question to answer. The terror of the legend comes to vivid life, however, as director Refn explores the twisted alternate reality created by Bronson, and highlights precisely how the controversial criminal staged himself within that anarchistic world. - Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide (Source)