LEGEND
GALA PRESENTATIONS D: Brian Helgeland. UK. 131 min. Sep 12, 9:30 pm Roy Thomson Hall Sep 13, 11 am Elgin Sep 19, 9:15 pm Princess of Wales. See listings. Rating: NNN
There are a lot of British gangster movies, and Peter Medak made a very good movie about the Kray brothers 25 years ago. But Legend has a very novel gimmick, casting Tom Hardy as both Reggie and Ronnie, who very nearly conquered Swinging London’s underworld.
The actor has a great deal of fun with the roles, playing the quick-witted Reggie as a confident charmer and the unstable Ronnie as thicker and more hesitant, but no less dangerous. Helgeland’s screenplay follows a pretty standard rise-and-fall narrative, forgoing the artful flourishes of Medak’s The Krays and considerably downplaying the role of the twins’ mother, Violet.
The storytelling may be mechanical, but whenever either Hardy is onscreen, it’s gripping stuff.
