Second Time Around Not Better

Rating: 6/10 (29 December 2015)

I went to this film with high hopes. I expected a grittier, meaner and, perhaps, even shocking version of what I already knew to be a gritty, mean and shocking story. "The Krays" was a film that really hit the bulls-eye. Unfortunately, Martin Scorsese made a movie that same year ("Goodfellas") and it was so powerful that it just made "The Krays" seem a bit weak, somehow. But that's the problem with movies that don't hit you over the head, but try to sneak it in with room-service.
"The Krays" was a very British version of a brutal gang-land movie. The unfortunate fact that "Goodfellas" merged with it somehow in the imagination of film critics doesn't make "The Krays" into something less. "The Krays" was a work of genius, albeit one in which the psychology of brutes is explored in a way that make no effort to arrive at moral judgments. The Kray brothers were weird and dangerous. To make a new movie about them would, it seems to me, invite the filmmaker to explore just how weird and dangerous they were. Where that might lead, I don't know.
I don't believe we'll ever know, because "Legend" is a bit flat. It really isn't about anything shocking or weird, and that's probably because the filmmakers lost their nerve. It just isn't weird enough to cause nightmares, and when you're following an act like "The Krays" you really should try, at least, to arrive at that place where nightmares are a possibility. "Legend" is just a flat and remarkably dull telling of the same story. No surprises. Nothing really disturbing. Just two lads being naughty.
Well, I expected more. I expected something truly perverse--and I'm not afraid to admit it. "Legend" would have shocked audiences in 1970. It would have raised every hair on your head in 1960. It says something about how things are now that, today, it doesn't even raise an eyebrow.