Legend

Legend is the latest film about the infamous Kray twins; British gangster brothers who both charmed and spread fear across London in the 1960s. Unlike Peter Medak’s 1990 biopic The Krays, which was a traditional cradle-to-prison crime docudrama, writer/director Brian Helgeland (42, A Knight's Tale, Payback) begins his version at the height of the Kray’s violent career and explores the relationships and actions that led to their downfall.  Whereas Medak’s movie centered on the twin’s mother (memorably played by Billie Whitelaw), Helgeland tells his story from the perspective of Frances Shea, the young wife of Reggie Kray.  Shea (winningly played by Emily Browning) narrates the picture and becomes the focal point of its dramatic arc. This perspective makes Reggie, the more mentally stable brother, the film’s protagonist and Ronnie the ostensible antagonist. There’s a lot of potential here for a fascinating character study but Legend is no more a penetrating psychological drama than it is an exciting action thriller.

Helgeland (the acclaimed screenwriter of L.A. Confidential and Mystic River) doesn’t explore much beyond the surface details of his subject. His structure is smart and should result in a richer, more complex picture than Medak’s movie, but if I were to recommend one over the other I’d have to go with the older film.  Legend unfortunately comes off as a surprisingly bland rehash of every other gangster picture we’ve seen in the last thirty years. It’s got impressive Steadicam shots, sequences of brutal violence, and all the requisite local flavor of the area and period in which it takes place. But everything feels like a movie – the sets, costumes, props, cars, etc. seem inauthentic. Perhaps this is intentional, as Ronnie Kray lives in somewhat of a fantasy world fueled by cinematic depictions of gangster life. Regardless, it’s distracting.  It’s very difficult to enter into a true-crime story that begins with a voiceover stating “1960’s London,” and then pans down to a digital cityscape that looks as spectacularly artificial as those found in contemporary animated fantasies. Period pictures (crime dramas in particular) should look authentically gritty, not like Masterpiece Theater confections. But everything we see on screen in Legend is just too “clean,” even the individual frames look as if they’ve been digitally scrubbed of any possible smoke, grime, or residue—quite surprising considering the cinematographer is the British master Dick Pope (Mr. Turner, Topsy-Turvy, Naked and countless others). 

What make the picture worth seeing are the performances by Tom Hardy as both Kray brothers. As we would expect from this actor, who seems capable of anything, each character is rendered utterly distinctively. Hardy brings detail, personality, and a rich internal life to both men.  Helgeland’s staging never makes the dual casting feel like a mere gimmick. Reggie Kray is a conflicted individual pulled in multiple directions, and Hardy evokes our empathy despite his horrific actions. Ronnie Kray, an unpredictable psychopath, is more cinematically larger-than-life, but Hardy makes him simultaneously terrifying, hilariously funny, and pitiable. It’s the best case of a single actor playing twins since Jeremy Irons in David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers (1988). But, unfortunately, this is not a case of an actor’s performance raising a subpar movie to a level of greatness. In the end, there are just too many other impressive Hardy films to make this one a must see.