Confidential,” Brian Helgeland, who also directs) with such impenetrable English accents that subtitles would prove helpful, at times, in sorting out, say, motivation. Unlike the bleaker “Black Mass,” “Legend” takes a kind of sick glee in the violence it depicts, rendering one particularly brutal knifing by Reggie (of a former partner-in-crime, Jack “The Hat” McVitie, played by Sam Spruell) with an almost comical frenzy.īoth of the men speak their dialogue (by the Oscar-winning screenwriter of “L.A.
Ronnie, in contrast, is Reggie’s mush-mouthed opposite: the physically thicker and mentally slower - not to mention schizophrenic - muscle of the operation, who relishes meting out mayhem, whether by claw hammer or pistol. He’s the glib, confident brains of the gang, known as the “Firm,” exercising tight control over a violent protection racket. It’s a feat of paired performances, each of which not only chills the blood on its own, but plays off the other like a hellish fun-house mirror.Īs Reggie, Hardy makes for a slick Cockney underworld kingpin, whether strutting the streets where he grew up in a dapper suit or taking the best table in his nightclub to entertain his new lady love and eventual wife, Frances (Emily Browning). The most remarkable thing about the film - in fact, the only remarkable thing - is that both Reggie and Ronnie Kray, who ruled the East End of London in the 1950s and 1960s, are played by Tom Hardy.
Multiply the reptilian creepiness of Johnny Depp’s transformative “Black Mass” performance as James “Whitey” Bulger by two, and you’ll have a pretty good sense of “Legend,” a similarly violent crime biopic - this time about identical-twin gangsters.
Tom Hardy stars as twins Reggie and Ronald Kray, as Reggie tries to seek control of the psychotic tendencies of Ronald.