Bronson is, I suspect, one of those movies you will either love or despise. It glorifies violence. It makes a celebrity out of a true to life psychopath. Guess on what side of the fence I fell? I fucking loved it, that’s where.

The story is very loosely based on the life of Michael Gordon Peterson, known to the British press as the most violent prisoner in Britain. Is the plot factual? Who cares? Honestly, the plot of this movie really doesn’t matter. The story is merely a framework on which to hang layers and layers of magnificence.

What I found most compelling about Bronson wasn’t the story being told, it was HOW the story was being told. Tom Hardy appears as Michael Gordon Peters (who changes his name to Charles Bronson) in no fewer than three different “one man plays”, telling his story as it’s interwoven with more conventional scenes of his life, which themselves are often told in unconventional ways. Confused? You won’t be. Just imagine Kubrick’s “Clockwork Orange” mashed up with Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” in a way that never seems derivative. Mental Patients dancing madly to a Pet Shop Boys tune… a brothel that rivals Dean Stockwell’s parlor… a man transformed in to a living breathing Magritte painting… the colors, the music, the angles… It’s fucking gorgeous!

Tom Hardy is stunning. The movie is written and directed in such a way that the entire thing rests upon his performance as Bronson, and he brings the awesome… with extra sauce. There are other actors in the movie, but just as his character is driven to be a star, Hardy grabs every inch of the screen and demands that you notice him. By the end of the movie, you’re willing to forget that “Charlie” is a psychopath… you just want to watch him.

Bronson will be screening twice at FantasticFest, on Sept. 26 and 28. It will open in a limited release in the USA October of 2009. See it. People will be talking about this one for awhile.