"Bronson" (2008) d/ Nicolas Winding Refn

My introduction to the film work of Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn came a few short weeks ago at the suggestion of one of my more cinema-minded affiliates in the form of his 2011 film, Drive, which I enjoyed greatly, but didn't cover here, as it doesn't really fit the qualifying genre conditions to merit an entry. His 2008 effort, on the other hand, documenting the life story of the most violent prisoner in the history of her Majesty's nick, Michael Peterson aka/ "Charlie Bronson", as portrayed by Tom "Bane" Hardy, fits our cult criteria consummately enough, alright. By the time the end credits rolled, I'd noticed both of my hands had naturally balled into fists from all the pugilistic commotion on the screen I'd just bore witness to. Refn masterfully frames each shot of this bare-knuckle, blood-spattered tough guy bonanza with delicate precision, lending arthouse insight into the complexities of the mind of our mustachioed anti-hero, peppered with punches to the face, and plenty of them.


"Straitjacket? Fuck. I got into the strawberry preserves anyway, didn't I."
That Michael Peterson (Tom Hardy) is not a singer or actor, is irrelevant to his desire for greatness, as we first see him in a naked scrap with prison guards. From an early age, Peterson shows a propensity to mix it up with all comers, from schoolmates to teachers, who's he's not opposed to smashing with school desks. He blags some cash from a chip shop he works at, in an attempt to impress one of his female co-workers, who ends up becoming his wife and bearing him a child. When domestic life proves too burdensome for him, he robs a post office, earning a seven year prison sentence for himself in the process. Here, he flourishes, a star to the other inmates, for his unpredictably violent episodes that no prison seems capable of quelling. He's eventually sent to Rampton, a mental hospital where his brutal outbursts are met with heavy sedation, but after a seemingly sympathetic paedo suggests that the two men rape a nine year old girl together sometime, he feigns compliance long enough to nearly strangle the fellow patient to death, earning him a trip to Broadmoor, another mental hospital where he instigates a full-scale riot and is seen atop the establishment's smoldering rooftop flashing his trademark double peace signs on the evening news.


"Ohhhh, my sciatica. Attica! Attica!"
On parole(!) in Luton, he reconnects with an uncle, who gets his feet wet in unlicensed bare-knucle boxing and human-baiting (man vs. vicious dogs, in case you were wondering) and adopts the nickname "Charlie Bronson", before robbing a jeweler to impress another more disinterested young woman this time, earning him a return trip to prison just sixty-nine days after his initial release. Back in the nick, he returns to his greased up, prison guard-throttling, ultra-violent ways and gets his sentence extended. The governor tells Charlie that he can foresee the inmate's death inside if no changes are made, leading him to take up art as a prison hobby, but when his efforts are met with indifference from the officials, he takes it upon himself to kidnap his art teacher, tying him to a post, painting him up like a sculpture complete with an apple in his mouth(!!), before greasing up for the familiar throwdown with the guards once he's had his bit of fun. Finally, we see Bronson, forced to stand bloody and naked in a coffin-shaped cage in solitary, as we're told the inmate hasn't been granted a release date. He seems okay with that...


"If you continue this...you will die here."
The real life Bronson got over the initial reservation he had towards Hardy in the lead role, meeting with him in prison, even shaving off his trademark handlebar for the actor to use on his own face in the film, and eventually calling him "Britain's number one actor" after finally getting to see the film for himself some three years later. Would you argue with this guy?? Me, neither. The critics were similarly fond of this one, which won Best Film at the 2009 Sydney Film Festival, and was also nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at Sundance the same year. I'm not sure one director has ever made it to my list of current favorites any faster than Refn. If this sort of thing is your speed, too, you'll do well to hunt down a copy and check it out immediately. Three wops on the rating scale and a recommendation. See it!


"You mind closely examining this deep transverse metacarpal ligament for me, gov?"

"Short Eyes"(1977)d/Robert M. Young

Ah, the Manhattan House of Detention.I can still smell the rancid bologna and taste the "juice"(translation:flavorless blue filth dosed with salpeter).I fondly remember my two strip searches and bunking next to water bugs so big, I could hear their heart pulsating over the screams of a cracked out Russian tourist cuffed to a cell door.Of course, nowadays its called the South Tower of the 'Bernard B. Kerik Complex' there on White Street, but for me, it'll always be 'The Tombs'.It is in a single cellblock here that is the focus for tonight's entry, the big screen adaption of a workshop production by Miguel Piñero while incarcerated at Sing Sing for armed robbery that went on to win the 1973-74 New York Drama Critics' Award for Best Play, as directed by Robert M. Young, who most recently helmed several episodes of the Battlestar Galactica reboot.Named after the prison slang for a paedophile, the film is a claustrophobic study of the hardships of life on what you might think was the lowest rung of the social ladder, but there are always lower depths to sink to, and justice dealt by urban throwaways often differs greatly(and violently) from the mainstream societal version.The film features Bruce "Willard" Davison in what might be the seediest performance of his career; one particular monologue so balls-out grimy, you're guaranteed to be itchy afterwards.Also on board are Piñero himself, singers Curtis "Superfly" Mayfield and Freddy Fender, Joseph Carberry, Juan Guzman, and Bob Maroff, who most will remember as a mafioso caught in DeNiro's sights in the bloodsoaked Taxi Driver finale a year earlier.Mayfield, who leads one fuck of a hokey prison singalong in the film, also provides a soundtrack full of memorable soul gems like "A Heavy Dude" and "Need Someone To Love" over the movie's jive-heavy dialogue, toilet paper knuckle wraps, and obligatory jailhouse male-on-male grab-assing in the showers.The whole production's every frame is hopelessly anchored to the seventies, but still manages to pack several solid shocks to the system, none-the-less.As it stands, Eyes remains one of my favorite prison dramas, fileable somewhere between Scum(1983), Cool Hand Luke(1967), and Chopper(2000).That reminds me, I owe somebody a review of that one...

Unless God's selling some good dope, this cat ain't havin' none of that bullshit.
The fragile harmony(extremely loose usage of the term here) inside one of the cellblocks in Manhattan's 'Tombs' is disrupted by the incarceration of one Clark Davis(Bruce Davison), a nervous middle class honky that may or may not have done something terrible to an innocent little girl on the outside.Shunned by the pick-coiffed Ice(Nathan George) and the black homeboys, the homo-amorous Paco(Shawn Elliott) and the Rican inmates, El Raheem and the pro-black militants, and even Longshoe(Joseph Carberry) and the white minority, Davis is publicly chewed a brand new shitter by Mr. Nett(Bob Maroff), the resident hack who looks forward to the new prisoner's inevitable transfer to Sing Sing, where the men know what to do with 'Short Eyes'.With Davis in general pop, none of the daily rituals hold the same joie de vivre for the inmates.Cupcakes(Tito Goya) is on the fence about being lusted after by half of the cellblock, Pappy(Curtis Mayfield)'s Cumbaya-ish day room singalong hits a sour note when Go-Go(Miguel Piñero) plants a DIY shiv in his bunk, sending him to the hole(earning him a later broken arm and spirited punch up from the whole block), and even Raheem's usual vitriol-fueled anti-white tirades barely merit a toilet paper-wrapped fisticuff from Yacub-spawned Longshoe, bringer of nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine diseases that he, no doubt, is.Hell, even the cockroach race doesn't feel the same.Only the level-headed Juan(José Pérez) is willing to ask Davis whether the pending inhuman charges against him are without merit or not, and soon enough, he wishes he'd never asked.Davis confesses that he's not sure if he molested the little girl in question, but spares no detail in confessing a sordid lifetime of kiddie fiddling to the disconcerted young latino.

I think Freddy Fender took that "Wasted Days, Wasted Nights" thing a little too seriously here.
After hearing of Davis' predatory park habits("the little black and Puerto Rican girls were the easiest...") and the real possibility that he might beat the rap and hit the sidewalk to ruin more innocent lives, Juan is burdoned with internal conflict concerning the teary-eyed pederast.Unthinkably, he finds himself taking the tyke toucher's back in a cellblock pow wow against everybody else, even his own people, with the effete Cupcakes even calling for a piece of the incarcerated cat himself, while staving off Paco's sudsy man-love vows in the showers.Juan's reluctance to rush to judgement is not shared by anybody on the block, including the hacks, and he's quickly vetoed by all.A group of the inmates snatch up Davis and spread him out along the day room table, amidst his sobbing pleas and threats to snitch.Raheem is given the impromptu razor shiv as executioner, but despite his innate hatred for all things white, he is ironically unable to bring himself to take the man's life.The Irishman Longshoe has less difficulty in carrying out the penalty phase for Davis' misdeeds, slicing his throat in one comprehensive slash.Nett watches, satisfied, as Davis chokes to death on his own blood, half-heartedly calling for medical assistance after he's sure the predator isn't going to recover.After a half-hearted verbal slap on the wrist from Mr. Allard(Bob O'Connell), it's business as usual on the block, as Cupcakes is released amidst shouts of ownership that echo through the halls.Life goes on, even in jail.

"Heyyyy, that ain't the Loofah, Paco(Shawn Elliott)!!"
After a series of documentaries for Nat Geo and tonight's drama, Young went on to helm the 1986 Farrah Fawcett rape-revenge vehicle, Extremities, as well as the aforementioned Galactica run, five episodes over five years(2006's Unfinished Business and 2007's The Son Also Rises among them, for my roomie and fellow Starbuck advo, Doc).The enigmatic Tony-nominated Piñero allegedly doled out the forty large he earned from tonight's feature to the books of incarcerated pals, and lived on the street, listing a pay phone number as his office contact, scoring roles as several unsavory prison types in movies and television before shuffling off his mortal coil in 1988 due to liver disease.Crazy.Carberry was a familiar television face, himself, also landing roles in the big screen version of Neil Simon's The Goodbye Girl, as well as the pro-Am Chuck Norris feature, Missing in Action, and even Speed.Dedicated woprophiles'll remember Bob O'Connell as the thrift store owner that dimes out Susan Sarandon while she's peaking face in Avildsen's joe(1970).As far as prison pics go, Short Eyes is powerful, thought-provoking stuff, an unexpurgated peek into life as those on the outside rarely glimpse, and a solid cult classic that scores three wops on the ratings scale.Seek it out, I'm pretty sure it'll leave its mark on you.Recommended.

Clark Davis(Bruce Davison) seems to have something stuck in his throat.His hand, I'm guessing.

Didja miss me,kiddies?

As you might have noticed,I've been on another unexpected sabbatical but the prodigal son has once again returned.The area's boys in blue,always enthused by your humble N's presence,pinched ol' Wop the day after Christmas ten minutes after smoking a cigarette on the front porch on a five year old probation violation bench warrant!Oh sweet irony!Lucky fuckers you are,the teflon emperor deftly avoided a 1-2 year sentence and now has (drumroll) an OFFICIALLY COMPLETELY CLEAN RECORD and is back on the case,bringing you the mad,the bad,and the wicked in bed cinematically here at Wopsploitation.I'll be drudging the swamps later on this weekend for some new reviews of movies that may or may not leave a taste in your mouth similar to what is described as "moon meat" on the weekly menu at Lackawanna Prison.Give me a day or two to enjoy cigarettes that have filters and come in packs,showers that arent crawling with flesh-eating bacteria,meals that don't cost the state forty cents a piece,and most importantly,time outside the stripey hole!


Yours Cruelly,
Wop