Film: 'Legend'

(If you've missed all the hype, or it hasn't reached you yet, I must say at the outset that, despite appearances on this film still, the film is emphatically not about a gay wedding!)

The Kray twins (both of them most impressively played here by Tom Hardy) remain among the most notorious criminals that Britain has ever produced, with their London gangland power, influence and corruption covering police, judiciary, politicians as well as dwarfing all other crime syndicates in the capital and beyond. This film documents the height of their baleful power during the mid to late 1960s.

Both men were, frankly, bullies of the most horrific kind - and extremely volatile. Like powder-kegs they could and did go off with an ultra-violent reaction to the smallest slight or provocation. In fact, this is probably the most violent film I've seen in several years, so if you can't bear the sight of blood (as a result of fights with fists, sticks, knives, guns, glass...whatever) this is one to avoid. In addition, there's a particularly grim torture scene. However, despite the subject matter, humour is frequently present, mostly of the 'black' variety, sometimes underlined by the hit songs of the time playing as background to the vicious fights.

Reggie was slightly more considered and in control, though nevertheless still liable to go to extreme lengths to settle scores, wheras his dour, bespectacled, gay brother, Ronnie, was the more impulsive and pathological (though that is relative) of the two, his behaviour made still worse by his neglecting to take the medication prescribed to dampen down his emotions. Both men are doted on by their adoring tea-and-cakes serving mother who, despite her sons' enormous ill-acquired wealth, still lives alone in a terraced house. Whether she is aware of the true nature of their business is doubtful, though it's more likely that she just doesn't ask questions.
One particular police detective (Christopher Ecclestone) doggedly watches the pair's movements from a car in full view of them, failing to bring them to justice because of being repeatedly frustrated by the stranglehold the Krays have on the judicial authorities through threats and corruption, as well as the Kray's uneasy and unenthusiastic alliance with another East London gangster (David Thewlis).
There's a prominent romantic strand to this film in Reggie's courtship and brief, turbulent marriage - his wife (Emily Browning) trying, to no avail, to get her husband to forsake his criminal ways. Rather curiously, it is she who keeps popping up on the soundtrack to deliver a voice-over narration. To me that seems a rather strange choice of character to do it, if any was needed at all, which I don't think was. It gets even odder in the light of a certain later event.

When I first heard about this film with Hardy playing both leads, I was excited at the prospect of seeing it. Then I started wondering whether this double-role might skew the focus of the film in that the audience would be more interested in wondering "How did they do that?" when both characters were on screen simultaneously, rather than attending to the story itself. In the event it didn't distract me unduly. Hardy delivers two tour-de-force performances that are so different, yet are so believable of them being brothers. It left me admiring both the actor and the technical way in which the trick was convincingly and flawlessly realised. I noticed no 'slip-ups' at all. (This feat of one actor portraying twins was also famously achieved by Jeremy Irons [that vociferous opponent of gay marriage and vocal supporter of blood sports] playing twins in David Cronenberg's 'Dead Ringers' of 1988).

I do remember, with some admiration and affection, the 1990 film 'The Krays', where the twins were acted by real twins Gary and Martin Kemp, of one-time 1980s pop group 'Spandau Ballet'. That film also boasted in a prominent role, the great, recently-late, Billie Whitelaw as the formidable, doughty mother, fearlessly championing her boys, whereas in this 'Legend' the mother is almost a background figure. The earlier film (director, Peter Medak) also featured British stalwarts like Steven Berkoff, Victor Spinetti and the then veteran comedian Jimmy Jewel in its cast. I've not seen 'The Krays' since 1990 but even after that single viewing, 25 years later it continues to linger in the memory most agreeably. I'm not sure if 'Legend' will also retain its impact, but if it does it will surely be principally because of Hardy's superbly realised double role.

Incidentally, I wonder whose idea it was to give this film the title of 'Legend', with its associated overtones of admiration and deserved fame. If the title was intended to be ironic I think it misfired.

This is a good film. American director Brian Helgeland, who's been known so far mainly for writing a number of significant films including 'L.A.Confidential' and 'Mystic River', acquits himself well in this busy and bloody affair, with not a dull moment. I spent much of the time gripping the arm-rest of my seat, wondering when either of the two brothers (one or both on the screen for almost the entire time) would explode without warning in a particularly bloody way, which they often did.

If you can take the blood and guts, I give it a clear recommendation......................7.