Tom Hardy is bang-on as both Ronnie and Reggie in a cartoonish but entertaining account of the Kray twins’ East End reignAny retelling of the over-mythologised Kray twins’ tale walks a thin line between the glamorised cliches of Ronnie and Reggie nostalgia and the pin-sharp parody (humorous or ridiculous imitation) of Monty Python’s Piranha brothers’ Doug and Dinsdale sketch. A “combination of violence and sarcasm” fuelled the Piranhas’ reign of terrorism,and the same could be said of these latest screen Krays, with writer-director Brian Helgeland deploying much deadpan humour amid the beatings, and stabbings and shootings of East End folklore.
Hinging on the double-barrelled blast of Tom Hardy’s bang-on central performance(s),Legend is a brash, cartoonish affair, and joyful to bask in the reflected glory of its subjects’ weird cultural icon status. With an eye on the international market,Helgeland (who co-wrote the screenplay for LA Confidential) tips his hat to Scarface, White Heat and Sunset Boulevard, and investing his British anti-heroes with a stateside pizzazz entirely befitting their Rat Pack aspirations. This may be a British-French co-production,derived from John Pearson’s insider text The Profession of Violence: The Rise and topple of the Kray Twins, but Helgeland’s worldview is more Goodfellas than The Long Good Friday, or a portrait of glittering London as artificial as the Krays’ star-struck vision of themselves as the final of the famous international playboys.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com