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“Legend” straddles the genres of crime thriller and biopic, telling the tale of twin gangsters, Ronald and Reginald Kray, who had a lot of pull in East London during the 1950s and 60s. This film like most crime thrillers had a lot of problems but the most profound to me was the last portion of the movie, specifically the last 45 minutes because it attempted to pull off this very serious, dramatic retelling of events and completely missed the mark. However, the most notable aspect of this film is the reason why it is worth watching, the brilliant dual performance of Tom Hardy as both of the Kray twins. This movie is evidence of his incredible range in acting for playing these two completely different characters simultaneously. I wonder if this will trigger a Best Actor Nomination. I personally don’t think so, this year is already so full of better performances but I would not totally disagree with it. There were two major issues with this movie. First, A) The tone they were attempting to achieve, and B) The overall concept of the film.
To start, the overall tone of the film was everywhere and not very coherent. While it had a very distinct focus in the first 45 minutes, right after the first slow point, it completely shifts and remains unfocused for the rest of the duration. The beginning of the film has a very humorous and quirky tone with a mix of gangster elements while it introduces the characters. The humor arguably goes a bit over the top as I found myself laughing way more than I expected to, especially for a crime thriller. As the film progressed, my hopes began to rise significantly. That is, until the 45-minute mark. It completely felt like the person writing the comedy simply stepped out because every ounce of humor left until the credits rolled. I’m not saying it should have been that humorous the whole way through, but to go from what it was to a straight crime film was jarring, and as a result, I disliked the movie more than I should have.
Even after this part where it shifted away from comedic strokes, it still struggled with determining if it was more of a drama or more of a thriller, which was the case in this portion as well. There was virtually no attempt at blending the two styles; rather, it just oscillated between the two extremes. This may have been a fault, or it could have been for some reason that the film does deal with a paranoid schizophrenic, and it was successful in making the movie very unpredictable.
The directing of the film is something else that stood out to me. What I remember enjoying from the movie was the sibling bond between Ronald and Reginald. I thought their interactions, as well as how they treated each other throughout the movie, were very captivating and whenever the movie centered around them, I was fully absorbed. There were parts in the movie where it seemed that the main emphasis was on Reginald and the girl he seemed to be infatuated with. I did not mind that particular side story but I thought it should’ve been used more sparingly. At times it began to dominate the film and I was getting a bit bored and just wanted to get back to the Krays. The third act also felt quite rushed, there were quite a few moments where the film jumped in time so quickly and it took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on.
Yet in my opinion, regardless of how inaccurate this film is, I found the dynamics of romance and the primary plot intertwining in this film very interesting and intriguing. There were moments and events involving the Krays that I found to be very interesting, but the film still failed to give me enough information to truly understand their impact on London and why they were infamous during that period. There were hints of it throughout, but in spite of the fascinating characters, the plot was not interesting enough.
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