LEGEND
Director:
Brian Helgeland
Starring: Tom
Hardy, Emily Browning, Christopher Eccleston
Running time: 131mins
Getting on for
50 years since their arrest and incarceration, the Kray twins still exert a
grip on the popular imagination every bit as vice-like as the one they had on
London’s criminal underworld in the 1960s. It’s embarrassing to admit it but we
Brits, in the words of Danny Dyer, love a “proper naughty geezer”. It’s
therefore unsurprising that Legend is one of three Kray-related movies out at
the moment. The other two – Rise Of The Krays and the documentary Kray Twins:
Kill Order – are straight-to-DVD/VOD affairs but reveal an appetite for
twins-related mayhem that never seems quite sated.
Legend –
directed and co-written by Brian Helgeland, an American who penned the
screenplays for LA Confidential and Mystic
River so knows his way around the
crime genre – is a thoroughly Hollywood
version of their story. It’s big, bright, bold and fast, full of instantly memorable
set-pieces and has probably the strongest ‘hook’ of any movie released this
year – Tom Hardy (Inception, The Dark Knight Rises) playing both Ronnie and
Reggie in a double performance that the word ‘extraordinary’ doesn’t quite do
justice.
Unlike Rise Of
The Krays, Legend starts with Ron and Reg already in situ as crime kings of the
capital’s east end. The latter owns Esmeralda’s Barn, a swanky nightclub full
of celebrities and villains, and soon starts dating the pretty but fragile
Frances (Emily Browning). Wealthy, respected and feared, it’s all going
swimmingly, but there are storm clouds on the horizon. Brother Ron – a paranoid
schizophrenic – is a loose-cannon with the common sense and social graces of a
Gila monster, while vicious south London rival Charlie Richardson
Of course, the
big cockney elephant in the room banging out Knees Up Mother Brown on the old
Joanna is Peter Medak’s 1990 film, The Krays, starring Spandau Ballet brothers
Gary and Martin Kemp. The pop stars aren’t always convincing as Ronnie and
Reggie, some of the symbolism (two-headed children, snakes, crocodiles) is
clumsy and the almost complete absence of the police is bizarre, but in many
ways it’s a substantially better film than Legend. The supporting characters
are stronger for a start, especially Jimmy Jewel’s boozy old charmer Cannonball Lee
and Steven Berkoff’s seethingly homophobic George Cornell. Perhaps because of
its proximity to the actual events and people – both Krays were still alive in
1990 – it has an authenticity Helgeland’s film can’t hope to match.
Oddly enough,
The Krays belongs not to the brothers Kemp but to Billie Whitelaw as the twins’
mum, Violet. Medak entertains an interesting notion – that the Krays were the
product of embittered East End matriarchs (Violet, her mum and sister), who’d
lived through the privations of war, had had their fill of feckless, emasculated
men and simply weren’t going to swallow any more shit from authority figures
either. At times it almost plays out like a feminist revenge fantasy, which is
astounding considering the macho subject matter.
Legend has no
truck with anything as highfalutin as subtext and, to be honest, would only be
worth a WW rating if not for Hardy. He eschews the reptilian swagger of the
Kemps for something far bigger and broader, filling every frame of every scene.
Neither his Ronnie or Reggie are at all subtle or nuanced but they are both utterly magnetic
(one critic suggested Hardy deserved a Razzie for his portrayal but that’s an
opinion every bit as deranged as any act the twins ever committed). As Reg he’s
the handsome, cocksure lad about town, as Ron he’s a tragicomic grotesque, like
something out of the League of Gentlemen’s Royston Vasey. Many of his scenes
are played for laughs but there’s always a frisson of menace lurking just below
the surface. The sheer malevolence etched across Ron’s face at an identity
parade as he stares out a witness who saw him commit murder is truly the stuff
of nightmares.
Hardy’s double-performance
is a real crowd pleaser (you can easily imagine gangs of lairy lads shouting Ron’s
line “A shoot-out is a shoot-out… like a Western” at each other after one too
many on a Saturday night), but it’s enhanced immeasurably by the seamless way Helgeland
and his team combine the two characters on screen. If you look hard enough you
can just about spot when a stand-in is being used – odd back-of-head shots and
other slightly unorthodox angles – but for the most part the combination of
Hardy as Reg and Hardy as Ron is a technical marvel. This is never truer than
during a brutal fight between the two which is the film’s centrepiece. A glorious
bollock-crunching, face-slapping, nose-thumping punch-up, it’ll make you laugh
as much as it’ll make you wince. It’s almost slapstick, and therefore perfectly
in keeping with the rest of Helgeland’s riotously enjoyable but ultimately
rather shallow film.
Rating: WWW
Ratings
WWWW = Wonderful
WWW = Worthwhile
WW = Watchable
W = Woeful
Ratings
WWWW = Wonderful
WWW = Worthwhile
WW = Watchable
W = Woeful
