Legend

Tom Hardy manages an acting tour de force here, playing twins in Brian Helgeland's film about Reggie and Ron Kray, Cockney crooks who became celebrities in London during the Swinging Sixties. The brothers' criminal careers were previously covered in Peter Medak's 1990 The Krays (played by siblings Gary and Martin Kemp), a full biography that emphasized the baleful influence of their mother. Legend covers less historical ground, beginning with the Krays already in business and concentrating on their expansion from the East End to tonier areas of the city, as they take out their main competition and strike a partnership with the American mob. The chief feminine presence is Frances Shea (Emily Browning), whom Reggie weds, and the crux of the plot centers on the deterioration of the marriage due to Reggie's insistence on protecting his brother, a psychotic who recklessly kills a rival in front of witnesses, endangers the gang's finances in absurd schemes, and orders a hit on the duo's fiscal manager (David Thewlis). Helgeland doesn't do a particularly good job of explaining the Krays' psychological dependence on one another or the specifics of their business operations, but he does successfully recreate the seedily glamorous milieu in which they thrived, and Hardy gives Reggie great surface charm and inner darkness while also putting on a tremendous show as the almost ghoulishly unbalanced Ron. A strong optional purchase. (F. Swietek)