Flawed but redeemed by Hardy's two performances

Rating: Null/10 (14 September 2015)

Generally I am not keen on viewing films about real-life gangsters because I think that is a tendency to humanise them and underplay their villainy.
This account of the reign of identical twin brothers Ronnie and Reggie Kray in London's East End of the 1960s is not free of such reservations. Let's start with the title - it seems to suggest fame rather infamy. While there are scenes of appalling violence and brutal murders, most of this vengeance is aimed at other gangsters and their threat to the wider community is glossed over. The police are portrayed as flat-footed, even comic, whereas it took real courage to go after the Krays.
At times, the film can't resist going for a laugh which I could have dome without in such a serious story. And then the format, of seeing the narrative through the eyes and words of Reggie's girlfriend/wife Frances (Emily Browning), is very contrived as becomes clear towards the end and only seems to present Reggie as a killer who is nevertheless an incurable romantic.
For all these criticisms, writer and director Brian Helgeland has produced a fine movie that captures the spirit of the times and covers a lot of ground in its 131 minutes. Above all, this is a superb platform for two powerful performances from Tom Hardy who plays both twins: the bespectacled, homosexual, mumbling, paranoid schizophrenic Ronnie and the handsome, smooth, calculating, conflicted and loyal Reggie. The viewer almost forgets that there is one actor rather than two on show here and this work must cement Hardy's reputation as one of the finest British actors around (he would make a great Bond).
Helgeland presents the story as a kind of love triangle with both Ronnie and Frances vying for Reggie's affections but, like a Shakespearean tragedy, nobody is left standing after the gang and the law have finished their long-running struggle.