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Reggie enters into a relationship with Frances, the sister of his driver, and they ultimately marry however, he is imprisoned for a previous criminal conviction, which he cannot evade. One of their first efforts is to muscle-in on the control of a local night club, using extortion and brutal violence. The two brothers unite their efforts to control a large part of London's criminal underworld. Reggie uses threats to obtain the premature release of his brother, who is rapidly discharged from hospital. At the start of the film, his twin brother Ron is locked up in a psychiatric hospital for insanity and paranoid schizophrenia. It gives this mostly predictable retelling a jolt of anarchy in the U.K.In the 1960s, Reggie Kray is a former boxer who has become an important part of the criminal underground in London. If her voiceover announces the movie's movie-ness, Legend's central cinematic ploy, the doubling of Hardy, has the opposite effect. Its abundant period songs are overly obvious - although Herman's Hermits' syrupy "I'm Into Something Good" does turn tart in this context - and Frances' narration pays unnecessary homage to a 1950s classic. Too often, Legend relies on glib Hollywoodisms. Eventually, the two men come to blows in a scene whose visceral power trumps its CGI trickery. Reggie smiles and Ronnie grimaces Reggie speaks and Ronnie grunts. The sibling antagonism is believable on screen, however, because Hardy makes it so.

(It also, unlike in Helgeland's flamboyant version, did not occur in view of shocked bystanders.) A murder committed by one of the men in the movie, for example, was actually the work of both. Some of the distinctions Legend draws between the two are fiction. The brothers may not have been so different, though, either in thought or action. The Yank brings a new source of illicit cash, but is one of several characters who exist primarily to warn Reggie than Ronnie is a threat to the operation.

Perhaps that's why he plays up a link to New York mobster Meyer Lansky and introduces a Mafia emissary (Chazz Palminteri). Confidential and Mystic River) is American. While this is a British production, Helgeland (scripter of L.A. Reggie recruits a mild-mannered con man (David Thewlis) as the front for brothers' legit operations, but Ronnie just doesn't trust the guy.Īnd associates Ronnie doesn't trust have reason to fear. He's comfortable in the Soho club where he hosts pop stars, fashion photographers (like David Bailey, who inspired the central character in Antonioni's Blowup) and actors (like James Fox, who visited the imprisoned Ronnie while preparing to play a savage gangster in Performance). Recent reports on declassified MI5 files suggest he hosted sex parties whose guests included Robert Lord Boothby, a Conservative party mainstay, but that fear of libel lawsuits deterred journalists from reporting on either man's activities.Īs depicted here, Reggie is more circumspect and less inclined toward violence. Ironically, Ronnie may have been protected by his lack of discretion. He was also bisexual - homosexual, says Legend - at a time when sex between men was illegal in Britain. The latter was diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent the last 25 years of his life in a psychiatric facility. But the principal conflict is between Reggie, who just wants to run posh casinos and clubs, and the uncontrollable Ronnie. Violet Kray is in this version, too, but has a less memorable role than Frances' mom (Tara Fitzgerald), one of the least joyous mothers-of-the-bride in film history.Īside from Reggie and Frances' domestic strife, the East End twins battle a rival gang from south of the Thames (its boss played by Paul Bettany) and a police detective (Christopher Eccleston) who's devoted to ending their careers. She becomes the central female character, where The Krays stressed the brothers' perversely indulgent mother. Legend is narrated by Frances Shea (Emily Browning), who was briefly married to Reggie. Writer-director Brian Helgeland is telling the same story, of course, but with some switches in emphasis. The actor plays both the seething Ronnie and the cooler Reggie, and endows each with more palpable menace than did Gary and Martin Kemp, the prettier boys who starred in the 25-year-old precursor. In revisiting the saga of real-life swinging-London gangsters the Kray twins, Legend has two advantages over 1990's The Krays: Tom Hardy and Tom Hardy. Twin gangster brothers Ronnie and Reggie Kray are played by Tom Hardy in Legend.