the m0vie blog

Legend is a nostalgic gangster film.

Sure, it embraces its sixties aesthetic with relish. After all, setting a film in sixties London all but assures impressive production design. Legend looks and sounds quite lavish, evoking not so much the sixties but the cultural memory of the sixties. The film likes its loud blues and rich browns, but it also draws quite skilfully from the sounds of the era. Appropriately enough for a film adopting the title Legend, the film feels like it owes more to some hazy collective recollection than the concrete reality.

“Whoa! Let’s READ the review first…”

However, Legend‘s nostalgia runs a great deal deeper than that. After all, writer and director Brian Helgeland has some experience with crime-based period pieces. The trailers to Legend loudly trumpet Helgeland as the writer of L.A. Confidential, and it’s an obvious comparison in terms of visual style. However, the narrative and structure of Legend feel a lot older. At its heart, Legend is an old-fashioned gangster biography, offering a broad and sweeping (and occasionally episodic) historical travelogue through the meteoric rise and catastrophic fall of the Krays.

It is an approach that has fallen somewhat out of style in recent years. The technique certainly has its weaknesses, particularly when applied by hands less skilled than those of Martin Scorsese. It is too much to suggest that Legend measures up to Goodfellas or Casino, but Legend makes good use of its format. It starts with enough energy to sustain its two-hour-and-ten minute runtime through the ebbs and flows of a familiar plot structure, allowing Tom Hardy enough room to craft two separate stunning performances.

Twin town…

Brian Helgeland’s script is generally efficient, and occasionally insightful. At its best moments, it captures the wry absurdity of the larger-than-life figures who rest at the centre of the narrative. Given the harm they caused and the destruction they wrought, it is perhaps too flippant to describe Reggie and Ronnie Kray as “quirky” or “eccentric.” Nevertheless, Helgeland’s script responds to the ridiculous real-life details of the case by painting them as pitch black comedy.

It is not just the central characters who seem to life in some outlandish other world. Ronnie falls in love with the sister of his driver, a young man named Frank Shea. Apparently Frank’s family only had so much creativity when it came to names, so she is named Frances. Paul Bettany has two short scenes as rival gangster Charlie Richardson, who lives a life so ridiculous and oversized that it practically screams for its own spin-off. Legend is absolutely populated with tiny little details that suggest the story has only been minimally exaggerated.

A Kray-ven romance…

Early in the film, Reggie Kray explains his business philosophy to Frances. Operating a series of clubs in London’s East End, Reggie Kray allows British celebrities to rub shoulders with gangsters and crooks; operating a series of flamboyant parties out of his apartment, Ronnie Kray allows major political figures to rub more than just shoulders with criminals and mobsters. Reggie suggests that there is a comfort in mingling with dangerous people, as long as they pose absolutely no threat. His clubs operate as something of a tourist attraction for the curious and well-off.

There are moments when Legend plays into this idea; the sense that – as with most gangster films – the vicarious thrill is made possible by distance and comfort. At its best, the film toys with audience’s comfort, playing terrifying violence as black comedy – prompting the audience to wonder if their chuckling is awkward or nervous. As with L.A. Confidential, Helgeland understands the genre well enough to properly pace his film; the awkward laughter is perfectly punctured by shocked gasps as an awkward stand-off takes a blood turn.

See, those protection guys. Always dangling something or other to keep you interested.

Helgeland is not quite as confident a director as a writer; there are points where Legend sags a little bit. The film is perhaps a little bit overwritten in places, with Helgeland’s script doing Emily Browning no favours by assigning her the role of narrator/exposition machine. To help the film cover the necessary ground in a reasonable runtime, Browning is forced to relay essential plot information to the audience, mixed in with a collection of stock gangster movie clichés about the perils of falling in love with a gangster like Reggie Kray.

Legend is an ambitious and old-fashioned film. It is very much an attempt to emulate the sprawling gangland epics of Martin Scorcese; a more cynical reviewer might suggest that Legend took the template of Goodfellas, only to swap out the cocaine for tea and both Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta for Tom Hardy. It is not quite that simple, but Legend does try to cover an impressive amount of narrative ground in the lives of its primary three characters. At a point where it seems the biography film is tending towards the smaller and more intimate, Legend goes big.

“Yes, everybody gambled in the sixties. And posh gambling, too. None of your scratchcards.”

There are problems with this sort of epic biography film. After all, lives don’t tend to conform to the familiar three-act structure and associated plot beats. Gangster stories tend to have the luxury of a familiar structure; the origin story in the opening act, the success with the seeds of decline, and then the third act disintegration. However, the scene-to-scene scripting of these sorts of stories can become episodic; a collection of anecdotes or stories told about familiar figures.

There are points where Legend does drag a little. The opening third of the film moves with a palpable momentum, introducing a large cast in a very clear and effective manner; however, the second half can feel a little weary and routine. Regardless of one’s familiarity with the history of the Kray family, there are points where certain inevitable developments seem more compulsory than tragic. However, Helgeland is a writer who understands structure, and Legend never feels like it gets lost or confused.

Mean (but very stylish) streets…

The casting helps. Legend is populated with a cast of superb British and international actors. The supporting cast is particularly impressive. David Thewlis, Christopher Eccleston, Chazz Palminteri, Sam Spruell and Paul Anderson all add character to the ensemble. Emily Browning struggles a bit in an underwritten role; cast in the dual role as narrator, Frances Shea is perhaps the biggest casualty of the movie’s very traditional structure. Shea feels less like a character in her own right than an audience surrogate and plot point.

However, Legend belongs to Tom Hardy. The actor provides both central performances, bringing both Reggie and Ronnie Kray to life. It is a remarkable accomplishment, with Hardy finding incredible depth and range in embodying these two radically different twin brothers. Hardy is one of the most interesting and dynamic performers of his generation, and his (literal) twin turns in Legend are a work of incredible ambition and technical craft. Hardy ensures that both characters are recognisably related and undeniably distinct.

“Top o’ the world, bro!”

Ronnie Kray is perhaps the role most in keeping with the niche that Hardy has developed for himself in recent years; Ronnie is very much “Hardy the character actor”, right down to the application of a thick accent and radical body language. Like Bane, Forrest Bondurant, Ivan Locke and Max Rockatansky, it is occasionally unclear exactly what Ronnie is saying; but Hardy’s performance is efficient and clean enough that dialogue is just a tool to help define character. Ronnie’s voice and accent are as much about informing character as they are about delivering exposition.

Ronnie is perhaps the most “showy” role. After all, it is Ronnie who gets most of the big setpieces and memorable lines; it is Ronnie who draws the most uncomfortable laughter from the audience, and who keeps the viewer on their toys for most of the film. Although very much a secondary protagonist, Ronnie is scene-stealing; the character puts Hardy in the delightful position of almost stealing a movie out from under himself. Hardy finds a strange humanity and empathy in Ronnie Kray, but it is a very stylised performance.

I’ll raise a glass to that…

In contrast, Hardy pitches his performance as Reggie Kray at a much more relaxed level. Hardy’s offers a much more traditional and conventional leading performance as Reggie. The film makes it clear that Reggie has no shortage of violence simmering beneath the surface, but Hardy offers a much more straight-laced performance. Reggie is more nuanced and subtle. It is a very interesting choice when it comes to the central performances, with Hardy approaching Ronnie and Reggie from two vastly different angles. There is considerable craft at work.

Legend has its problems, but none of them are critical, and none of them undermine its substantive strengths. Legend is a very traditional and old-fashioned gangster film, albeit one powered by two stunning central performances from the same actor.

Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: film, legend, non-review review, reggie kray, review, ronnie kray, tom hardy |