Dual control | 10 September 2015

Legend is a biopic of the Kray twins starring Tom Hardy as Reggie and Tom Hardy as Ronnie, so it’s buy one get one free, and this offer will sell the film. It sold it to me, who would otherwise have little interest in the Krays, and was never moved to correspond with either (see Harry Mount’s Arts Feature; I did once write to David Cassidy, but did not receive a reply). So it’s Hardy’s performance(s) that’s the draw, and Hardy is dazzling because Hardy is dazzling, not because Legend is especially dazzling. Indeed, Hardy dazzles in spite of the film, which is muddled, cartoonish, fails to negotiate a clear path between fact and fiction, as is the way with biopics of this type (see also: anything on any of the Great Train Robbers), and will also kick off the debate about the glamorisation of violent criminals, as if we care. Our care should only ever be: is it any good? (Answer at end, but I believe I have already given you some hefty clues.)

This has been written and directed by Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential, Mystic River), an American who has said that his interest in the Krays was first piqued in 1998 when making a film about Led Zeppelin. One of their entourage had a missing finger ‘and he told me a story about how the Krays had cut it off’. (This turned out to be a lie but Helgeland’s interest, once piqued, did not un-pique.) His route to the story is through Frances Shea, Reggie’s wife of two months who later committed suicide. Here, she narrates via voice-over, from beyond the grave, which is odd, as is her omnipresence; as is her commentary on events she couldn’t possibly have witnessed.