Bronson
(2009/Magnolia/MagNet Blu-ray)
Picture:
B Sound: B Extras: C+ Film: C+
Nicolas
Winding Refn’s Bronson (2009) is the
director’s attempt to do a smart, yet violent film and is the latest in the
ever-occasional attempts to be the next variant of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) telling the
true story of a highly violent criminal who has named himself after the 1970s
action star Charles Bronson. Not that
the film does much with that, as it is obsessed with the failing proposition of
Kubrick’s work.
Tom Hardy
(Layer Cake) plays that title
character in a film that wants to be a surreal biopic. We learn in cross-cutting the life of Michael
Gordon Peterson, who later became this most infamous killer. Hardy is very good, except when stylized
moments hold back his performance. This
film may be violent, but it is not raw enough to succeed and Refn may be
putting too much of his money on Hardy.
That never works.
Add that A Clockwork Orange has been endlessly
imitated and is still being imitated all the time (extending to books,
magazines, stills, fashions, Music Videos, et al) that Refn is also doomed in
this respect. Even if the imitations
were not a constant since 1972, this is far from the best of them and robs the
film ultimately of telling this very interesting tale in its most powerfully
potential terms. Often, the film landed
up reminding me of the comedy Color Me
Kubrick (also from MagNet, reviewed elsewhere on this site) further
reminding us how distant this film is from the original. It is certainly worth a look, but don’t
believe al the hype. It does earn its
R-rating, though.
Combining
classical music with slow motion images, violence and well-lit images is not
sufficient enough to make this Kubrickian.
In addition, the overuse of the fantasy sequences where the title
character talks to a full house of motionless audiences telling his life story
on an old-fashioned stage of the past (Clockwork
Orange meets Barry Lyndon?) is
such overkill, it backfires. Audiences
in Europe, Australia and New Zealand
would not be at fault to expect Crowded House or Split Enz to show up and sing
a medley with him.
The 1080p
1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image is grainier than expected because most
of the film is shot in Super 16mm film with some Super 35mm usage. The result is that it wants to have it both
ways by having clear, deep, vivid shots and still have the grain of modern
films. This does not work and never
enhances the storytelling in the least. Director
of Photography Larry Smith actually worked with Stanley Kubrick on Barry Lyndon (as chief electrician) and
The Shining (as gaffer), so it has
that going for it. However, that does
not save it. The DTS-HD MA (Master
Audio) 5.1 lossless mix is warm and well recorded, but has some flaws and
inconsistencies here and there, partly from its limited budget. Classical music and sound effects dominate
the surrounds.
Extras
include a trailer, Monologues, making of featurette, Training Tom Hardy featurette, Behind the Scenes footage and
Interviews segment with Refn, Hardy and Actor Matt King.
- Nicholas Sheffo
