The big ferocious setpieces – in which the twins smack up the Richardson gang in a pub, or lay cathartically into each other – have a zippy cartoon-strip energy. London convincingly impersonates a grimy older version of itself in hatchet-faced terraces, looming power stations and dark canals. Pubs and clubs and jails are recreated in impressive detail, while the schmutter, the motors and the brylcreem are all just so. There is something elemental in the tie that binds the twins together: Reggie commits his climactic act of violence because, he whispers in Ron’s ear, he is forbidden to kill his own brother.Ī lot of Legend is a lot of fun, and good-looking with it (the DoP is Dick Pope, whose work was so painterly in Mr Turner).
Oh, and Ronnie likes bumming Hellenic boys. After the newlyweds honeymoon in Greece, Frances unfavourably compares Reggie’s vow to go straight with the durability of the Parthenon. Rival gangster Charlie Richardson ( Paul Bettany) talks about Alexander the Great in a greasy spoon, and Ronnie alludes to Agamemnon. To embed the eponymous idea that its scummy gangsters are figures of myth, the script borrows the furniture of ancient Greece. The first sight of the brothers in the backseat of a limo consciously quotes the final shot from The Long Good Friday, the one when Bob Hoskins realises he has been nabbed. The memory of Gary and Martin Kemp in the so-so 1990 biopic has been clad in concrete boots and flung in London’s dirty old river. His overtly homosexual Ronnie is a jaw-clenched, hard-staring psychopathic panto dame. His Reg is all plausible charm and business-like thuggery, with only the odd eye twitch to hint at the coiled menace within. Hardy asked to play both brothers perhaps to prove that, forever typecast as monosyllabic brutes, he really can do the villains in different voices. But the stellar turn in Legend is of course Tom Hardy. All Cupid’s bow and cockney vaals, she does a flawless job of turning herself into, in effect, Gemma Arterton’s titchy sister. To underpin the idea of looking in from the outside, Helgeland cast an Australian actress – Emily Browning (pictured with Hardy as Reggie Kray) – as Frances. According to Legend, Reggie lost control of himself and his empire after that. He has certainly come at well-trodden terrain from a novelty angle, telling the story through the eyes of Reggie’s mousy muse Frances Shea who – and do look away for the rest of this paragraph if you don’t know what happened to her – took an overdose and done herself in. The traditional thing to say about foreign directors on such occasions is that they bring the outside eye of an anthropologist. An entertaining showcase for its lead, if little more, Legend seldom fails to fascinate, even when it's for the wrong reasons.Writer-director Brian Helgeland knows his way around screen violence - he scripted LA Confidential – and he has been a tourist in England before: he paid a knockabout visit to the Middle Ages with A Knight’s Tale. His humorous delivery as Ronnie and the charisma he brings to Reggie means there's much to enjoy, while the film's length is easily worn.
Still, Hardy creates two distinct, compelling characters, although the relationship between them is somewhat lost in the trickery. The approach is borderline deranged but it never makes the jump into parody, while the insight-free screenplay flirts with Martina Cole-esque crime clichés. Helgeland withholds the impact of the violence until the final act in an upbeat handling of his material which seems off. Reggie's missus (Emily Browning) narrates and we see her "gangster prince" through her goo-goo eyes. Brian Helgeland fashions their reign of terror into a battle for Reggie's soul between the wife who wants him above board and the unstable brother loath to lose his partner in crime. With a title connoting the pedestal on which it places its subjects, Legend stars Tom Hardy as East End gangster twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray.
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