A little underwhelming... but not a complete waste of time.

Rating: 6/10 (3 November 2015)

I've been excited to see "Legend" for quite some time now, and after I saw it, I was a little disappointed. This was for a few reasons; from watching the trailers, I had expected a Guy Ritchie style British crime comedy (such as "Snatch") which I had hoped would work well but I had my doubts because it was, after all, a biopic. To be honest, when it was funny, I thought it was pretty good but then there would be long dramatic "filler" scenes which almost made it feel like watching another film. I didn't always feel the drama that the film was trying to send to audience, and at times I felt that it was a bit forced. Another problem that I found with the film was its story, the problem is it doesn't have a solid story, I couldn't find any narrative and I felt that it was trying to copy the structure of "Goodfellas" - this doesn't work too well because that film is an in-depth character study of life in the mob, while "Legend" gives us little-to-no insight into life as a British gangster, leading me to my next complaint, the characters. Apart from Tom Hardy's dual role, I felt that the rest of the characters were either too weak or underwritten, which isn't too good seeing how Emily Browning's character is our narrator. The rest of the cast, except Hardy is forgettable. However, there are two key reasons to why I enjoyed the film at times, Tom Hardy and the soundtrack. I thought that Hardy was absolutely phenomenal in the leading role as the Kray Twins. He manages to create two separate characters who both possess their own personalities, that is amazing. It's his performance which saves this deeply flawed film for me - I loved it. Finally, I must mention the soundtrack... What a great soundtrack!!! From the very opening scene, we are introduced to Carter Burwell's amazing theme for the film. It is quite effective for the dramatic segments of the film and I found it to be a decent tune by itself. As for the rest of the soundtrack, it was pretty good and did what it had to do as well. That's probably what's so good about the soundtrack, the fact that there was coherence behind it. Overall, it's not a bad film, nothing special either but just above average. I would recommend it for Tom Hardy and the soundtrack. I hope that maybe you could find something which you like about the film too. Thank you for reading.