Legend review

Before the screening of Legend, there was a Q&A with writer/director Brian Helgeland. When asked about the dangers of glamorising gangsters, Helgeland said: ‘Gangsters are glamorous.’

He then noted that just because something is glamorous doesn’t mean it’s good.

Few gangsters are as glamorous and bad as the Krays. As club owners, they rubbed shoulders with members of the British aristocracy and celebrities like Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland. They were also killers, whose murders of George Cornel and Jack McVitie made them bywords for underworld brutality.

In Legend (based on the book The Profession of Violence by John Pearson), Helgeland doesn’t shy away from either of these elements. The film begins with the Krays, Ronald ‘Ronnie' and Reginald 'Reggie,' (both played by Tom Hardy) already established names in London's criminal underworld. It then follows them through the 60’s as their notoriety increases and a scandal involving a member of the House of Lords propels them to celebrity status.

Tom Hardy delivers screen-dominating performances as the twins. His Reggie is controlled and concerned with maintaining a veneer of respectability, telling his future wife Frances (Emily Browning): ‘I’m not a gangster, I’m a club owner.’

It is in the role of the psychotic, bisexual Ronnie that he excels though. Whether he’s being candid about his preference for men in front of American Mafioso, or outlining his plans to build a city in Nigeria – ‘for the children’ – Hardy’s Ron Kray is a hulking, mass of lunacy who still somehow manages to be charming; he’s part Joe Pesci from Goodfellas and part Yogi Bear.

Against this performance/s, it’s difficult for the rest of the cast to compete. As its narrator, Emily Browning’s Frances Shea is meant to provide the film’s human centre. Instead she is colourless and most of the time seems to be going through the motions of the gangster’s moll: she wants Reggie to change, ultimately realises he won’t, etc. Likewise, Christopher Eccleston is adequate, though no more than that, in the role of Leonard ‘Nipper’ Read, the detective on a mission to bring the Krays down.

Some liberties with the subject matter are of course taken. In the murder of Jack McVitie, Ronnie Kray’s role is downplayed while Reggie Kray’s motivation is given a more emotional bent. There is also the issue of Ron’s sexuality: while he did have relationships with men he also had a relationship with a woman called Monica during the period in which the film is set. However, this is something that Helgeland glosses over.

While Legend doesn’t offer the most accurate or insightful look at the Krays, it does convey the glamour and celebrity that surrounded them in their heyday. It manages this without sanitising the brutality that allowed them to rise to the top of London’s underworld. Together, this makes Legend an interesting exploration of what makes the Krays culturally fascinating, as well as a worthy addition to the canon of British gangster films.