Using long fluid shots and dollops of period pop, Helgeland goes for a Goodfellas-style feel, but missing is the hubbub of activity around the Krays, the colorful cadre of heavies and hangers-on that Martin Scorsese could deftly turn into a whole distinct ecosystem. Watching Ronnie, it feels almost as if he’s communing with an alternate reality - which, when you think about it, he basically is.Īlas, the rest of the film can’t match Hardy’s energy. Early on, a psychiatrist who’s been coerced to give him a clean bill of health briefly breaks rank to tell Reggie that Ronnie is “fucking batty.” In contrast to the rakish, confident Reggie, Hardy gives Ronnie a hunched posture and a gaze that’s as much befuddled as it is unsettling, along with a loose lower lip that makes his words come out in a menacing warble. We’re told that Ronnie was forever broken by a stint in prison. Ronnie Kray, on the other hand, is a dread, stylized beast straight out of the Hardy pantheon, right there alongside Bane from The Dark Knight Rises and Charlie Bronson in Bronson. Even though know this relationship won’t end well - not just because this is a gangster movie, but also because Frances tells us in voice-over, “It took a lot of love for me to hate him the way I did.” The film is narrated by Frances (Emily Browning), the young sister of one of the Krays’ henchmen, who meets Reggie one day when he comes to her door looking for her brother right then and there, she falls for this slick smooth-talker who sensuously shares a lemon candy with her. Reggie Kray is the charmer here, and Hardy plays him in full-on leading man mode: Obscenely handsome, and forever at war between his potential for violence and an innate, honor-among-thieves type of decency. It’s a testament to Hardy’s talents that, watching Legend, one finds it hard to believe that these two men share the same DNA his characterizations are that distinct. They may be identical twins, but the differences between them are not subtle. Here, the actor plays identical twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray, the infamous gangsters who alternately charmed and terrorized London in the 1950s and 60s.
Now, writer-director Brian Helgeland’s Legend gives Hardy a chance to perform both sides at once. Sometimes, as in this year’s Mad Max: Fury Road, he mixes the two a bit, letting us bask in his deranged nihilism before reclaiming hero status. As versatile an actor as he is, Tom Hardy’s characters often come in one of two types: Charmingly intense rascals and surreal lunatics.
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