Legend * * *

If the Kray twins are legendary, it's for all the wrong reasons and in a way Legend let’s us know that.

The Kray twins were a pair of very hard gangsters in London in the sixties. A couple of lads from the east end who seemed to be crazy since the day they were born; especially Ronnie who ended up being incarcerated in a prison for the criminally insane.  

But they were good at being gangsters. They did everything right on that score, from beating the opposition into submission (sometimes with claw hammers) to consorting with the aristocracy and politicians - which is primarily why they became so famous. It was mostly due to the Lords and Ladies and celebrities that hung out with them.  The Kray’s started a nightclub/casino, Esmeraldas Barn that became the toast of London.  The place to be seen.

They were a handsome pair of brothers and they loved and cared for each other very much (even when they were beating the crap out of each other), though neither of them seemed to feel any empathy with the pain or suffering they imposed on anyone else.

Legend is a beautiful recreation of London in the sixties.  It looks great. The Kray Brothers are well on the way to ascendancy when we meet them.  Ronnie is just being released from prison (again) and Reggie has been doing a lot of homework and getting Esmeraldas set up. In the swinging sixties London was the place you wanted to be - including the mafia - but they could only get into London on the Kray Twins terms, not the Mafias. The negotiations between the Krays and the Mafia is quite a funny scene (the Mafia had no idea what they were dealing with. The Kray’s don’t scare easy).

In essence, Legend is a vignette of the Kray Twins rather than the full picture.  Legend spends a lot of time on Reggie’s relationship, and eight week marriage, to a girl called Francis (Emily Browning) and suggests her presence had a dividing effect on the twins.  Reggie had spent a lot of time looking  after Ronnie until her arrival. Despite being frighteningly violent (he virtually reveled in it) Ronnie was openly gay, a lifestyle a man could get teased for in the sixties. But no one teased Ronnie.

In some ways the story line lacks energy.  Even though the police and their infamous “accountant” are well featured,  the drive of the story is on stuff happening to them rather than them making things happen.  

But more than anything Legend is worth going to see for the performance of Tom Hardy who plays both brothers superbly. If he’d just done one of them it would have been enough but he plays both Ronnie and Reggie flawlessly.  I wonder if he’ll get two BAFTA’s - one for each.  He would deserve it.