The film follows the life of this prisoner, considered Britain's most violent criminal, who has been responsible for a dozen or so cases of hostage taking while incarcerated.

The film begins with scenes from Peterson's delinquent early life which he narrates with self-deprecating humor.

He decides to escape by earning a transfer back to prison and attempts to strangle a detainee that revealed himself to be a paedophile, but is apprehended before he can kill the man.

In the vaudeville theatre, he shows film footage of a rooftop protest during which he claims to have caused "tens of millions of pounds' damage".

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.

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 this human still-life has been arranged to his satisfaction, he accepts his fate, calling for the prison guards to burst in for yet another brawl, for which he will be sent back to solitary confinement.

[1] Upon release, Bronson received positive reviews, with many praising Hardy's performance, the film's writing and direction, as well as the humour and the action sequences, though it was criticised for its violence.

Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, gives the film an approval rating of 75% based on reviews from 79 critics, with an average rating of 6.5 out of 10 with the consensus "Undeniably gripping, Bronson forces the viewer to make some hard decisions about where the line between art and exploitation lies.

[9] Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four and praised the decision not to attempt to rationalise and explain Bronson's behaviour, stating in his review: "I suppose, after all, Nicolas Winding Refn, the director and co-writer of Bronson, was wise to leave out any sort of an explanation.

Describing it as "theatrical, creative, and brilliant", Bronson heaped praise upon Hardy, but disagreed on the implied distance between himself and his father, and the portrayal of Paul Edmunds, a former prisoner and nightclub owner (portrayed in the film by Matt King as Paul Daniels) as "a bit of a ponce".

Bronson's trust in Hardy's acting grew such that once he had seen the film, he said, "If I were to die in jail then at least I live on through Britain's No 1 actor".