The creepy Krays, twin crim kingpins, ruled the London underworld in the early Sixties.
On the surface, Swinging London, was home to dance craze, music craze and fashion craze, and underneath it all was the Krays.
They were quite the duo: Ron certifiable, homicidal and Reg suave, debonair and an absolutely ruthless thug. These creepy Krays became the stuff of legend and this new feature film is the latest cinematic examination of their reign of extortion and murder.
Brian Helgeland, who earned an Oscar for his scripting of LA CONFIDENTIAL, writes and directs this epic gangster pic that features Tom Hardy as both Reg and Ron, an impressive double act of doppelganger dramatics.
The siblings are depicted as the heads and tail of the same coin, flip it and you might find the schizophrenic Ron, who relished being a gangster, flip it again and you might land on Reg, who preferred being known as a swanky nightclub owner. Either way, flipped they are, sibling standover merchants, cut snakes with an enormous propensity for violence.
The film proffers the idea that Reg might have broken free and gone legitimate had it not been for kinship loyalties.
Certainly Reg is softened somewhat with his head over heels relationship with young Frances who he woos and weds. Helgeland makes her the posthumous narrator of his picture, beautifully played with a tender fragility by Australian actress, Emily Browning.
Apart from Hardy’s extraordinary dexterity in the dual role, LEGEND boasts a brilliant supporting cast with David Thewlis as the Kray’s banker, Leslie Payne, Christopher Eccleston as Nipper Read, the dogged detective intent on the duo’s downfall, and Nicholas Farrell as a psychiatrist who is manoeuvred into pronouncing Ron sane.
Jane Wood as Violet Kray gives a wonderful characterisation of the mother of these malevolent boys, perhaps a palimpsest of their personalities. Her performance is not overstated and is beguiling prescient.
The great Timi Yuro is portrayed by Duffy, and she gets a couple of wonderful on screen moments as well as singing the closing credits song.
The lush soundtrack is a super Sixties sampler with grabs from Hermans Hermits, Helen Shapiro, The Dixie Cups, and more, with The Ramsey Lewis Trio’sThe In Crowd getting a second prominent cinematic outing after it’s edifying airing in Woody Allen’s Irrational Man earlier this year.
Mention must be made of the make-up artist, Christine Blundell, who worked hand in hand, hairline and gumline, nose and tail, to aid and abet Tom Hardy’s meta metamorphosis of the towering twin’s of terrorism. Blundell won an Oscar for her work on Topsy Turvy and that standard of work is evident again here.
Audiences are perennially drawn to the outlaw– from Robin Hood to Ned Kelly– and this film, with its vicarious view of the Krays, brilliantly plays on this fascination
LEGEND opens in cinemas on Thursday 15th October.