"Bronson"

So, I think I liked this movie. I'm pretty sure I liked this movie. My initial reaction is that I liked this movie and upon further contemplation I still like this movie. In fact, I like this movie a lot. I'm not sure it's a movie I could watch over and over again though. Tom Hardy (few may know him as one of the brothers from "Warrior," more may know him as Eames the forger in "Inception," all will know him as Bane in "The Dark Knight Rises.") plays Michael Peterson who takes upon himself the moniker Charles Bronson and is touted as "the most violent prisoner in Britain." He is also apparently the most naked prisoner in Britain. If not for anything else, his performance is worth watching this movie for; not the naked pushups he does, or the naked fighting he does, or the naked lotion rubbing he does before fighting, or the naked body painting he does before fighting, but his acting performance. He is fantastic and I've never seen a shaved head and mustache pulled off so well. He was truly a comical and engaging character that left me in stitches.* Perhaps the biggest problem with this movie is it's montage style throughout. It does make this movie a little on the difficult side to watch, yet at the same time works so well with the character of Bronson and how he is portrayed, a confused, out of control, off the cuff, wacky, wild, almost ADHD type individual. But once we have the montage that seems to inhabit the first half of the movie introducing him, we then settle into a more linear narrative of his release from an asylum for the criminally insane, his brief stint out of prison (69 days) as a underground street fighter and his subsequent incarceration in which he shows promise of bettering himself, only to take a hostage in prison and show that he really is just out to make a name for himself in any way possible. The montages do make for great scenes, great clips, great one-liners, great parts and I'm not sure this style of filmmaking would really work for any other movie with any other character played by any other actor. My head is telling me that this shouldn't have worked, but it did. All these great parts made a collectively great movie experience.

*Do you like how I used a British term meaning to laugh uproariously since I'm talking about a British movie about a British icon? "Stitches" is a British term right?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1172570/