Tom Hardy has become one of Hollywood’s most popular leading men, and he can trace a lot of his success back to an underrated crime movie from 2008. Hardy’s best movies show that he has a good nose for selecting interesting and worthwhile projects. Of course, Hardy is known for crime movies, but this is just one side to his talents as a performer. He’s constantly seeking to push his boundaries and surprise audiences, both with the types of roles that he takes on and the bold choices that he makes as an actor.

Hardy often takes big swings in his performances, including his broad repertoire of bizarre accents and voices. This helps him stand out from other performers, and it partly explains why he’s arguably the biggest British star working in Hollywood today. He’s gotten to a point in his career where he now has the rare luxury of being able to pick and choose whatever roles appeal to him the most. While many actors reach this level of prestige and cash in immediately, Hardy has continued to lend his talents to interesting projects with artistic value.

Tom Hardy Proved He Was Leading Man Material In Bronson

Hardy’s Career Took Off Shortly After Bronson

Tom Hardy worked steadily throughout the 2000s, but Bronson gave him his first leading role in a major movie. Not one to play it safe, Hardy delivers a characteristically splashy performance in Bronson, and it’s still one of his most relentlessly entertaining. This is appropriate, since Bronson tells the real-life story of Michael Peterson – who prefers to call himself Charles Bronson – the man known as Britain’s most violent prisoner. Bronson spends most of his time in jail, repeatedly stretching out his incarceration by attacking guards unprovoked. He also has a brief stint in a psychiatric hospital, but he finds a way to return to his violent ways despite his heavy sedation.

Bronson is a unique kind of biopic, since Nicolas Winding Refn takes hold of the story. He intersperses several scenes from a vaudeville theater, as if Bronson is narrating his experiences to a captivated audience. This underlines Bronson’s delusions of grandeur, and his desperate hunger for fame. Bronson also ignores the typical structure of most biopics. It isn’t about how the character changes or achieves something, because he does neither. Instead, Bronson often seems like a series of darkly comic vignettes and brutal fight scenes. Bronson is often given the chance to better himself, either through release, relationship or art, but he refuses.

Bronson Showcased Tom Hardy As An Action Star

Hardy Provides A Glimpse Of His Action Credentials Early In His Career

Since Bronson, Tom Hardy has had a few memorable action roles. He’s a highlight of The Dark Knight Rises, he does well in the recent Netflix thriller Havoc, and his Venom movies have been consistent crowdpleasers. Mad Max: Fury Road remains his best action movie of all, although the petrol-headed chaos doesn’t share much DNA with Bronson‘s close-quarters prison brawls. The one thing that’s a constant throughout all these wildly different action movies is Hardy’s innate authenticity as an action hero. It’s well known that he’s an accomplished martial artist, and Bronson lets him flex his muscles a little.

This Is Still Among Tom Hardy’s Best Performances

Not Many Actors Could Do What Hardy Does In Bronson

While Bronson is an interesting crime biopic, and Nicolas Winding Refn’s stylistic flourishes are a joy to behold, it only works so well because of Tom Hardy’s performance. There are only a handful of characters who appear in more than one scene, none of whom have much development or depth. The onus is on Hardy to carry the audience’s attention throughout Bronson. Fortunately, he does so with aplomb, from his opening monologue to the absurd, violent living artwork that ends the story. Even when he’s simply speaking to the camera, Hardy manages to be more entertaining than he has any right to be.

Hardy injects a lot of dark humor into his role as Bronson. The script is filled with absurd contradictions, shocking outbursts and snappy one-liners, but Hardy also has the ability to turn the most mundane sentences into hilarious punch lines. He inhabits the character completely, which means that even when Bronson doesn’t act like any other human on Earth, there’s something identifiable about him. Bronson sometimes seems to take place in a strange, heightened reality, but Hardy strikes the right balance, never tipping over into meaningless surrealism.