Hugely Enjoyable Absurdist Black Comedy

Rating: 8/10 (22 December 2015)

I gave this a miss when it came out and you can understand why . Yet another Brit flick featuring gangsters and this time it once again revolves around those poor misunderstood Kray boys . I do remember the pretentious biopic on them from 1990 starring the Kemp twins and that was unforgettable for all the wrong reasons with Steven Berkoff giving the worst performance of any actor in any film ever . And no doubt we'd be getting the usual myth of "They stuck to their own . It was business , we were safe in those days etc" so I found myself watching LEGEND as a mere change from the Oscar bait material I've seen over the last couple of days
What the producers and director Brian Helgeland have done is to make a brutal and absurdest black comedy featuring a couple of wannabe gangsters who eventually bite off more than they can chew . Reggie is the brains of the outfit which isn't saying much while Ronnie is the brawn of the outfit which is saying a lot and the film concentrates on Reggie trying to consolidate the gains they make while Ronnie is on self destruct mode while suffering from psychosis and promiscuous . It's probably not a very accurate bio-pic and you constantly get the feeling that the film has take the mere bare bones of the story and rewritten the details to make a very enjoyable film . If you want the true story go and read a book the twins but this approach by the production team works superbly with the first two thirds concentrating on laughs with the tone gradually and subtly changing as the film reaches its end
Some things don't work entirely successfully . Ronnie is a little bit too erudite with an idiosyncratic philosophy and it's difficult to believe he had any knowledge of existentialism or pheromones . Likewise Francis Shand voice-over is often a bit too prosaic to be convincing and is slightly intrusive . There also noticeable anachronisms to the dialogue with words like "Horny" which I positive didn't exist in the 1960s
These are minor flaws however and I can't think of a British film I've enjoyed more recently and with the award season in full swing I'm slightly disappointed that this one seems relatively ignored because Hardy is Oscar worthy in his dual role . That said one wonders if the subject matter has turned off voters ? Saying that the film doesn't glamorize violence and deconstructs the legend of east end gangsters and makes them the object of fun