★ ★ ★ ½ ☆
Tom Hardy commands the screen as twin gangsters Ronald and
Reginald Kray in this engrossing crime biopic. Through the eyes of Reggie’s
wife Frances, we follow the Kray’s conquest of London through the 1960’s and
the scuffles between the two brothers as their empire expands.
It’s almost as if Hardy didn’t quite believe the praise laid
upon him for a plethora of recent roles and felt a burning desire to prove to
everybody that he absolutely positively can
be a serious actor outside of adaptations and franchise films. Prove himself he
does, in a dual-performance bursting with enough ferocity to fuel the entire
cast of any other film. As Reggie he is an almost James Dean-like presence, a
cigarette hanging in a picturesque manner from his lower lip with a leaning swagger
to match. Ronnie is the polar opposite; a straight-backed, loud-mouthed brute
with ever-puckered lips and bulbous eyes played somewhere between hilarious and
terrifying. In essence, Hardy displays Ronnie as the show and Reggie as the tell.
Merging two roles by the same actor is now commonplace in
mainstream film, but the effects and logistics are so seamless here that a
slight percentage of the wow-factor is lost because the audience is constantly
wondering how the Donald Duck they did it! Hardy’s total control of the viewer’s
attention also reduces the screen time dedicated to learned British talent such
as Christopher Ecclestone as stone-faced Superintendent Read and David Thewlis
as ill-tempered Kray subordinate Leslie Payne; more’s the pity.
There is, however, one performance that stands apart, to
give us a way into the story through fresh eyes: Emily Browning as Frances is
the secret weapon, a guide for the innocent and uneducated audience through the
story as her rose-tinted lenses of love and respect for the Krays are slowly
but surely worn away by unfolding tragedy. I very much appreciated that
Browning’s occasional narration doesn’t chime in every few minutes to remind us
of the date or throw important news stories of the day into the mix as many
others would. London’s East End is brought to life via the lavish opulence and
cold smoky streets of the interior and exterior world respectively.
Frances’ developing relationship with the twins could easily
feed a problem that director Brian Helgeland would always have to conquer (and
has indeed acknowledged consistently in the press): treading the thin line
between portrait and worship, study and shrine. While most biopics would allow
the best and the worst of their subjects to intertwine, Legend takes a far more simplistic and stylish approach: the first
half of the film sees Frances fall in love with Reggie as the twins move on up
into the echelons of high society amidst a wave of ‘swinging sixties’ pop tunes,
before the second half sees their world begin to unravel as their contrasting
natures deal deadly damage.
Whilst the latter part is a cacophony of brutality, excess
and emotional trauma, the ‘let the good times roll’ nature of the former leads
the glitz and glamour to remain lodged in the mind once the film has ended, leaving
us with the thought that, perhaps, crimes does occasionally pay.
