The fact that Tom Hardy is brilliant in his dual turn as infamous London gangsters Ron and Reggie Kray is not surprising. What is surprising however, is that the film, written and directed by Brian Helgeland, chooses to play the narrative mostly for laughs, turning Legend and its brutal main characters, into something of a watered down joke. It is an unfortunate and quite frankly, baffling decision. Now it's not like gangster films of the past haven't followed a similar path of utilizing humor as a way of offsetting the brutality, but it was always done sparingly, and never obscured the serious nature of its subjects. The Krays were violent murderers after all, yet in Legend, they actually come off looking like Abbott and Costello at times. The whole tone of the film is just way off, a fact not helped by the decision to have the story narrated by Ron Kray's wife. Believe me, Karen Hill from Goodfellas she ain't. Helgeland, who wrote LA Confidential, is a talented screenwriter. Yet something tells me if a Brit like Matthew Vaughn had written this film instead of an American, it would have turned out differently. For it doesn't feel as if Helgeland really got the world of his subjects at all, and if he did, he certainly wasn't able to translate that understanding to the screen. A definite misfire, with two far better central performances than it deserves.
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