Sunday, February 14, 2010

BRONSON (2008)

You ever wondered what would happen if Mr. Bean gained a 100 lbs. of muscle and turned into a violent psychopath? Yea, me neither, but BRONSON answers the question anyway.

Human punching machine, Michael Peterson, who, later in life, would call himself Charles Bronson, is a punch-drunk loser who goes around punching everything while screaming "You cunts!!!". Eventually all that punching catches up to him and he's thrown in prison. In prison, he continues punching things until they get tired of his punching and send him to an insane asylum. Finally he runs out of stuff to punch so they let him go. As a free man he punches things like gypsies, humans and dogs for money. Naturally, "the Man" is jealous of Bronson's punching abilities so he's thrown back in prison where the guards continue the mind-boggling habit of allowing him to repeatedly take hostages. They also, for whatever reason, only confront him right in the punching region. You would think they would just tear gas him, but I guess it's more fun getting punched. The End.

You would hope a story about the "most violent prisoner in Britain" would be interesting, but I found the whole thing to be a mess. There was zero character development to this guy. He just ran around nonstop bashing shit like the caveman on Aqua Teen Hunger Force when he sees fire. Even worse is the fight scenes were all really short and completely unconvincing, by that, I mean tons of non-connecting punches and pulled punches. Also, there were times before the main character started calling himself Charlie that people were already calling him Charlie. I found that confusing. Overall, the entire thing looked very low-budget...I don't mind low-budget movies, but I do mind when movies look like shit because of it.

There was material here for a good film, but it didn't happen. The whole thing was weak and nowhere as violent as I had hoped it would be. Outside of the language and multiple shots of the dude's tallywacker, this movie could probably air on network TV. Also, I have absolutely no idea what the quote "A CLOCKWORK ORANGE for the 21 Century" on the poster means. That makes zero sense.

EDIT: Well, I guess I'm going to have to have to backpedal on my review a little. I just read some stuff on Wikipedia about the real life "Charles Bronson" (Michael Peterson) and he's taken hostages at least 6 times. So it appears that some of the stupid shit that happened in the movie actually happened in real life. It also said that he was released from prison not once, but twice! Brilliant!