‘Legend’ plays fast and loose – often amusingly – with the laddish mythology of the Krays.
It’s a smart move which stresses that, for all its true-life origins, this is a story we’re watching, not a reconstruction or creaky biopic. Frances narrates, quietly dampening the machismo. Hardy makes us laugh, too, revelling in the Krays’ more grotesque, ridiculous behaviour.Īlmost as intriguing as having Hardy play both twins is that Helgeland frames ‘Legend’ as a doomed love story, near enough opening his film with Reggie meeting Frances and ending soon after the failure of their marriage.
Contradictions like this suit the facts: Ronnie was a murderous psychopath and openly gay the twins were as thick as thieves but regularly on the verge of killing each other. Early on, there’s a virtuoso one-take shot through a club owned by the brothers, as Reggie takes his fragile girlfriend Frances (Emily Browning) on a dinner date, slipping off to deal with some bloody business in a side room. The film is written and directed by an American, Brian Helgeland, who wrote ‘LA Confidential’ and ‘Mystic River’, and he makes the Krays’ tale glamorous while also sticking a pin in that glamour it’s a delicate trick. Each twin is totally distinct: Ronnie operates on a knife-edge of paranoia and delusion (he was schizophrenic) Reggie is tough, precise and protective of his fragile sibling. Much more than a gimmick, it’s like watching one side of a mind wrestle with the other – literally, in one explosive, fun-to-unpick fight scene. In what is surely his finest hour, Tom Hardy plays both brothers. By then, the twin brothers were ruling the East End, West End and beyond, running clubs and protection rackets, warring with the Richardson family from south London, flirting with the American Mafia and committing the murders that would put them away for life. Slick melancholy crime drama ‘Legend’ drops us straight into the mid-1960s glory days of London gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Kray.
0 kommentar(er)
