Hardy and Hardy

Rating: 4/10 (2 January 2016)

Let's start with the title...of all the films I've seen with irrelevant and inappropriate titles, this one takes the biscuit and I'm sorry, I didn't find the film legendary either. British cinema's continuing fascination with the notorious (now there's a better one-word title!) Kray Twins continues and I doubt this will be the last one either. The twist here of course is having Tom Hardy play both parts, thanks to some clever editing and video trickery, although with Reggie and Ronnie not at any time looking like the identical twins in the movie, you sort of wonder what was the point.
I liked half of Hardy's performances. His Reggie was fine, a criminal who falls in love with an innocent, pretty young girl and wants to be the perfect husband to her but can't resist the lure of power that running his London empire or his misguided loyalty to his more thuggish, slow-witted brother, Ronnie. I personally found his second portrayal of the lumbering other brother to be exaggerated and bordering into caricature.
The film tries to tell its story through the eyes of Reggie Kray's young wife Frances who commits suicide only weeks into their marriage, seemingly unable to cope with her new husband's unwillingness to give up the trappings of his ill-gotten success, although I am aware that her family today strongly disagrees with the passivity and helplessness she exhibits here, claiming in her defence her feistiness and even bravery in leaving Kray so soon after their wedding and then quickly deliberately overdosing rather than be dragged back into Kray's orbit. This seemed to me to be an unsuccessful attempt to humanise the Krays particularly as it seems to be at least part of the justification of Reggie Kray's seemingly out-of-character frenzied killing of Jack "The Hat" McVitie.
I also found the film to be selective of other events in their well-known story and a certain lack of continuity in the narrative, with the use of 60's music to define the era being haphazard at best (for example Herman's Hermits' 1964 UK number 1 hit "I'm Into Something Good" plays while Reggie is nicked while watching the World Cup Final which took place in the summer of 1966 - the Kinks' "Sunny Afternoon" would have fit better, surely).
Quibbling apart, the film just rambled on, with little dramatic tension or driving narrative. It would have benefited greatly from tighter editing and a more focused storyline in my opinion and in the end seemed to rely far too much on Hardy to carry the film on his two pair of shoulders. However what really let the film down as indicated for me were the writing, the pacing and a distinct lack of edginess I think that any film dealing with the Krays needs to address. Clever casting gimmickry can't compensate for those.