Legend (2015) review

The only thing I didn't really like about Legend was the title. Why Legend, I wonder? Is it trying to hint that the film is more myth than history?

It is a very different film from The Krays (1990) which focussed on the twins growing up and their relationship with their mother. In Legend we are looking at the grown up twins, already gangsters, their relationship and the relationship between Reggie and his wife Frances.

Another difference is that we have identical twins here... since Tom Hardy plays both men. The Kemps are similar but not identical... and neither can act in the same league as Hardy.

The story is well known. And this film doesn't add much to what I already knew. Instead it tries to add to our understanding of what it might have been like to be involved in the crime scene of London in the 1950s and 1960s.

For me it worked. I found the twins very convincing. Often forgetting for a while that it was one man playing both. And Emily Browning does a great job too as Frances.

The interesting thing about the Kray twins is that they have two sides. On the one hand they are well-dressed club owners who mingled with aristocrats and celebrities. On the other hand they were brutally violent gangsters who intimidated, beat, tortured and killed people to get what they wanted.

Legend gets that across really well.