| Director | Nicolas Winding Refn |
|---|---|
| Budget | $230,000 |
| Box office | $2.7 million |
Michael Peterson narrates his early life with self-deprecating humour. Initially, he addresses the camera dressed in prison garb. Other times, he tells his tale in a vaudeville-style theatre with a live audience.
In 1974, at 22, he robs a post office, leading to his first prison sentence of seven years. At sentencing, his mother hopes he will be out in four, but his violence in prison extends his sentence. He is sent to a psychiatric hospital the following year, where he continues to rebel and is administered drugs which he claims make him physically weak.
In 1978, Peterson decides to escape by earning a transfer back to prison, and he attempts to strangle a detainee that revealed himself to be a pedophile, but is apprehended before he can kill the man. He comments to the audience that despite all his prison time and solitary confinement, he has never killed anyone.
In the vaudeville theatre, he shows film footage of a rooftop protest in 1982 during which he claims to have caused "tens of millions of pounds' damage". He credits this destruction with the government's decision to declare him "sane" and have him released in 1987. After a brief reunion with his parents, he sets off to see his predatory Uncle Jack. He is welcomed and reintroduced to an old prison mate who promises to set him up as a bare-knuckle boxer, and gives him the name Charles Bronson, after the American actor.
On January 1, 1988, he proposes to a woman and steals a thousand-pound ring in the hope that she will marry him, but she reveals he was just a fling. On January 7, on his sixty-ninth day free, Bronson is sent back to jail.
In 1993, he takes a prison librarian hostage and waits for reinforcements to arrive, alternately screaming at his hostage and peaceably enquiring after his family. When other guards arrive, he strips naked and forces the librarian to assist in applying his "body armor" of petroleum jelly, to make him harder to grab in the imminent brawl. After being restrained, he is warned by the prison governor that he will die inside if his behavior does not improve.
In 1999, encouraged by a prison art teacher, who notices something special in his drawings, he becomes a model prisoner for a while, channeling his confusion and pain into vivid imagery of birds and grotesque creatures. When told that the art studio will be closing, Bronson attacks the teacher and holds him hostage.
While prison officials wait outside, he demands music be played. He paints his naked body black and ties the teacher to a post. He paints a moustache onto the teacher's face, forces an apple into his mouth and removes his hat and glasses to put on the teacher's head in an imitation of the René Magritte painting The Son of Man.
After this human still-life has been arranged to his satisfaction, he accepts his fate and calls for the prison guards to burst in for yet another brawl, for which he is sent back to solitary confinement, naked and heavily beaten.
Onscreen text reveals that Bronson has spent 30 years of his sentence in solitary confinement, has no planned release date, and as of the early 2000's, is considered Britain's most dangerous prisoner.