Malice In Wonderland/Bronson/Love, Honour And Obey

Triple bill of British crime dramas. Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn directs ‘Bronson’ (2009), a brutally violent portrait of Britain’s most notorious prisoner, Charles Bronson (born Michael Peterson and later re-named by his fight promoter) – who has spent 34 years of his life in prison, and 28 of those in solitary confinement. As a teenager in the early 1970s, Bronson is jailed for seven years after robbing a post office. During his sentence he becomes increasingly violent and re-styles himself as a hardened criminal, convinced that his new persona will bring him the notoriety and fame he craves. In the crime comedy ‘Love, Honour and Obey’ (1999) Jonny (Jonny Lee Miller) is an Eastender fed up with his boring job as a courier. When his best friend (Jude Law) offers him a job working for his uncle (Ray Winstone), a notorious gangland leader, Jonny jumps at the chance and is soon part of the most feared gang in North London. But Jonny hungers for a bigger slice of the pie and soon starts a feud with a feared South London crime gang. ‘Malice in Wonderland’ (2009) transposes the characters of the classic children’s novel ‘Alice in Wonderland’ to the gritty criminal underworld of the North East of England. Alice (Maggie Grace) is an American law student studying in London. After being knocked down by a taxi, she wakes up in an unfamiliar town with amnesia. She must now do all she can to make her way out of the strange and twisted world in which she finds herself, which is peopled by a colourful and distinctly unsavoury assortment of gangsters, druggies and lowlifes.