Mark Kermode suggested
that perhaps the title of Brian Helgeland’s Kray twins’ film was ironic as it
plays so fast and loose with the myth that has surrounded the Krays. Whether
film has a responsibility to accurately represent reality deserves robust
debate, but when the promotional material states ‘true story’ and you’re dealing
with biography, the advice should be, tread lightly.
Legend takes the route of glamorising gangsterdom, showing Reggie Kray handing
out money to the poor, fulfilling the role of the friendly uncle to his East
London neighbourhood. The violence, the fear and the crime takes a back seat in
Legend to the point where we leave
without any sense of the psychopathic thuggery or criminal entrepreneurship the
Kray twins possessed. Instead, what we are left with are disparate and
disjointed scenes covering many years resulting in a narrative that is
incoherent and fragmented and what Helgeland believes to be the most
interesting parts of Ronald and Reggie’s lives. This unusual shift away from
narrative and towards a snapshot style of filmmaking may be because Helgeland
was aware that his greatest asset lay not in story, but in his lead actor.
As the Kray twins, Tom
Hardy is phenomenal, with performances that are distinctly different, yet allow
us to see the family connection beyond simply appearance. When the film does,
infrequently, convey fear, it is because of Hardy. The root of the problem with
Legend is that, more than tipping its
hat to Goodfellas (1990) it tries to
scoop up its style and replicate it. Goodfellas
is a studied account of the gangster life that offers us the highs, draws us in
only to make the low so damaging, a skill Scorsese repeated with The Wolf of Wall Street (2013). Legend offers us glamour and style and
romance of a life choice that should be treated with intelligence and
equanimity.
