The Krays Movie Review & Film Summary (1990) | Roger Ebert Tweet London had never seen anything quite like the brothers Kray, the sadistic twins who ran a protection empire and palled around with cafe society. They became celebrities of a sort. British professional criminals followed a more genteel tradition until the Krays came along in the 1950s and early 1960s. You might have gotten bashed on the head or even, after great provocation, shot dead, but until the Krays, it was unlikely anyone would pull out a sword and redecorate your face. Advertisement The Krays got a reputation for performing their sickest crimes themselves, and then turning up, immaculately dressed, at posh nightclubs. The British tabloids made an industry out of them, but what nobody could quite believe was that they really did go back home every night to the humble East End semi-detached home they shared with their Cockney mom. The genius of "The Krays," Peter Medak 's new film about the most notorious villains of modern British crime, is that the movie is not simply a catalog of stabbings, garrotings and bloodletting.

It goes deeper than into the twisted pathology of twins whose faces would light up with joy when their mom told them they looked just like proper gentlemen. Reggie and Ronnie, their names were. Ronnie was the instigator, the one who got off on killing, and Reggie was the weaker one who killed only once, under Ronnie's insistent pressure, but at the time there was nothing to choose between them: They were the two most feared men in the East End. And their mother, Violet, was treated very, very nicely, wherever she went. Advertisement "She was the most important love interest in their lives," Billie Whitelaw was musing one afternoon after the movie's North American premiere. Whitelaw is the distinguished British actress who is known as the foremost interpreter of the works of Samuel Beckett, and she plays Mother Kray in the movie. It's quite a performance. "Violet was just as well-known as the twins," she said, "but for different reasons. She was a classic East End mother figure. And the whole focus of the movie is domestic. Violet and her boys.

There's a most horrific film to be made about the Krays, because what Peter Medak has done is just the tip of the iceberg of the atrocities they committed. If you wanted to make a gory horror movie out of the Krays, it's all there to make. But Peter has actually made a domestic film about a mother and her two sons." In "The Krays" (opening Friday in Chicago at the Fine Arts), Violet cheerfully rules her husband; her other son, Charlie, and all the neighbors and relatives. She's a forcible, opinionated, strong-willed woman who knows when she holds her twins for the first time that they're destined to be special. As children, they were mean and violent, and forged a strange bond of twinship that distrusted the rest of the world - except for Violet. She could see no evil in them. She doted even on their "business," which all London knew was extortion. Advertisement In the film, the Krays are played by brothers, Gary and Martin Kemp, whose sleek, good looks seem right at home in expensive suits and polished shoes.

Their performances suggest an eerie quality to the twins - the notion that they are never entirely offstage, that everything they say is for effect, sometimes ironic effect, and that they are never more dangerous than when their oily politeness is on display. Whitelaw knew the twins at height of their powers. "I was working at the Theatre Workshop with Joan Littlewood," Whitelaw remembered, "and they were around then. They actually offered Joan protection, but I think it was a courteous, nice protection. They loved theatricals." And yet the protection they were offering, I said, was basically protection against themselves. "I suppose so, yes. But they always wanted to be considered gentlemen. That was very important to them. They behaved with great courtesy. Their brother Charlie, who I know quite well, the oldest one, always behaved with enormous courtesy. And a number of the old gang members who were around when we shot the film were extremely polite on the set.

They very much wanted to be considered gentlemen, and in their own way, they are, sending flowers, doing this, doing that, standing up when a lady came into the room." You've been quoted, I said, as telling Charlie you didn't know if you could get Violet quite right; you didn't know if you could do her justice in terms of how warm she was, and what a good mother she was. Advertisement "I know that these three boys were besotted with their mother," Whitelaw said. "They all three of them loved her. In fact, everyone I've spoken to who knew Violet Kray loved her. I was talking to Charlie about her very early on, in fact, and whenever I started to talk in detail about Violet, tears would come to his eyes. Even her brother loved her, and that's unusual, isn't it? For siblings to love one another, and I didn't know if I could be that lovable." Yet she gave birth to the most feared and violent London criminals of their time, twins who brought professional street violence to a city where the policemen didn't carry guns. Whitelaw smiled.

"They always claimed that they only slashed, beat up and tortured their own - the gangs with which they were constantly warring. It has been said if the Krays were around today that they would clean up the drug scene, that they would have it under control. But perhaps the price would be too high to pay." We were talking in Whitelaw's hotel suite in Toronto, where the film had just played in the film festival. It arrived on this continent having set box-office records in England, where the Krays are still serving the long prison sentences that brought an end to their empire. The film is the Whitelaw's biggest hit to date. She does most of her work on the stage, and her best-known films are probably "No Love for Johnnie" (1961), as the wife of ambitious politician Peter Finch , and "Charlie Bubbles" (1968), for which she won a British Film Award as the wife of philandering football fan Albert Finney . The central fact of her career has been her long association with the work of Samuel Beckett, the late, great, exiled Irish playwright, who chose her as the key interpreter of his work.

Advertisement For Medak, the director, the film is a career high. The Hungarian-born filmmaker, long in Britain, is best known for " The Ruling Class " (1972), starring Peter O'Toole as a very, very strange aristocrat, but Medak's career in recent years has included such unexpected material as " The Changeling " (1979) and " Zorro, the Gay Blade " (1981). The film works so well, I think, because it creates such a disturbing tension between the evil done by the Krays and the love they basked in at home. Whitelaw's concern that she could not make Violet lovable enough is significant; how could a woman that lovable have produced - and doted on - the Krays? "Perhaps love is blind," she said. "Actually blind. I mean, I love my children to bits. I do, and I would fight tooth and nail like a tigress for my children. But a lot of mothers love their sons, and they don't turn out to be psychopathic torturers.

I was astonished when I saw the film at how angry I seemed to get, at how often I lost my temper, and I think it was because, as an actress, the way my love was coming out was in fiercely protecting those boys." Do you have any theories about whether her love may have led them in the wrong direction - or were they simply bad seeds? "I've always thought the fact that they were twins had something to do with it. And the fact that one of the twins was a psychopath had a hell of a lot to do with it. There's no question that both of those boys are very bright. If Reggie had been just one little chicken to come out of that egg, instead of two, I think he would have gone through the usual East End working-class pilfering - the bit of wheeling and dealing that goes on in all working-class areas - but he would have gone through that, and came out the other side. But Ronnie is a psychopath. And because of that, he had enormous influence on Reggie. "It's sad," Whitelaw said, "if you are going to feel sad about these men at all, that Ronnie, who was the one who instigated all these things, is kept in a hospital.

He's kept under sedation, so he's quite happy. He's getting happy pills all the time, and he's allowed to see people within reason, whenever he wants to, and he sits in a room, and they have coffee and talk. But Reggie, who was the sane one, was put in an ordinary hard-core prison situation, and is now the one who is acutely depressed. He is the one who now has great emotional and mental problems." And Violet sleeps beneath a huge marble stone that says, "Mother." Advertisement Movie Review - - Review/Film; Twin Thugs With a Mother Complex - NYTimes.com Review/Film; Twin Thugs With a Mother Complex By JANET MASLIN Published: November 9, 1990 The white swan flying through the dream sequence that opens Peter Medak's spooky and transfixing new film, "The Krays," appears predatory and gray. And in a later scene, children in a schoolyard are made to resemble an insect swarm. By comparison, the twin gangsters who are the film's central characters could not look more innocent or pristine. A speck of someone else's blood on one of their clean, monogrammed white shirts is enough to cause them real dismay.

Savage thugs, prim fashion plates and unswervingly dedicated mama's boys, the Kray brothers held sway over the East End of London in the early 1960's. (They don't know the Beatles, one of them says calmly in the film, "but I believe they know us.") These twins make a riveting subject for Mr. Medak, who is still best known for his 1972 satire, "The Ruling Class." The droll affinity for eccentric behavior displayed in that film is here put to much darker, more chilling, hugely effective use. "The Krays" shapes the brothers' story largely in terms of their mother's apron strings. Violet Kray, as tacitly dominant in the film as she was in the lives of her sons, is seen as an otherwise ordinary woman distinguished chiefly by the depth of her parental devotion. As played with terrific blunt force by Billie Whitelaw, Violet is a down-to-earth cockney mum, often seen gossiping or peeling potatoes or serving tea. Whether she serves it to relatives or to a dozen dark-suited mobsters seems, to Violet, a matter of very small regard.

The boys' early relations with their mother are traced from childbirth as her glowing visions clash with unpleasant reality for the first of many times. " 'At's right, Mummy loves you, you little monsters," she croons to 2-year-old Ron and Reg. Later on, in a bomb shelter during wartime, the boys listen raptly to tales of Jack the Ripper while their mother listens fiercely to the sounds of warplanes overhead. No one, she mutters, would dare harm her sons. Contempt for men is an item of faith in the Kray household, where their aunts and grandmother help to hide the boys' weak, draft-dodging father from the law. Their grandmother's belief that "men are born children and they stay children" doubtless contributes to the brothers' sheepish, polite manner around the house, and later even leaves its mark on their behavior as grown-up hoodlums. In a nightclub, having just run a sword through the hand of a rival, they sneeringly insist that the man say thank you. Just after this heavy sadism, the Krays are glimpsed back home again, bashfully telling their mother that their new suits come from Savile Row.

"The Krays" eerily intertwines the brothers' criminal exploits with their attitudes about love and family. For a time, the closeness between Ron (Gary Kemp) and Reg (Martin Kemp) is unaffected by the brothers' differing sexual orientations. And indeed their rise to power and fame seems the most thrilling thing in both their lives. But when Reg becomes infatuated with a vacant dolly-bird named Frances (Kate Hardie), the homosexual Ron becomes upset enough for the brothers' harmony to unravel. One of the film's most stunning sequences finds Ron asking whether Reg is serious about Frances just as the two are about to burst in on a group of rival gangsters. Machine guns in hand, they talk of love and marriage, which in view of the brothers' family history have their own peculiar violence. ("Let me tell you something, Charlie Kray," their mother has told their father, "a house is a bloody battleground all on its own.") The gunfire that bursts forth seconds later is followed immediately by the flying confetti and booming church bells at Reg and Frances's wedding. The Kemp brothers, from the English rock group Spandau Ballet, give haunting performances and are uncannily well used.

Quiet, restrained, with cool, piercing eyes, these brothers make plausible the Krays' reserves of violence and the near-telepathic empathy that binds them together. Gary Kemp, as the more commanding and peculiar Ron Kray, makes an especially scary impression, particularly once the Krays' perfect control has begun to unravel. In a series of events set off by Reg's marriage, the Krays are seen on a downhill spiral that Mr. Medak conveys with great and effective understatement. The sight of this fastidious twosome in the film's first messy room is enough to signal deep trouble. Mr. Medak's direction is quick and elliptical, sometimes so mischievous that in one scene he positions a Kray next to a portrait of Napoleon; when Reg begins to fall apart over Frances, a tawdry-looking temptress can be seen on the wall. The screenplay, by Philip Ridley, is equally bold. ("If people are afraid of you, you can just do anything," Ron says. "Glamour is fear.") The look of the film has been carefully achieved with well-chosen sets and costumes, which evolve from wartime austerity to incipient Mod splendor.

Among the actors, Steven Berkoff and Tom Bell make brief but powerful appearances as the two hoods whose resentment of the Krays' celebrity contributed to the brothers' downfall. (The Krays were convicted of killing rival gangsters and have been incarcerated since 1968.) Ms. Hardie gives a genuinely plaintive quality to the dim, whiny Frances, who never understands how a wife can be treated with such smothering cruelty by a boy who so dearly loves his mother. "The Krays" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It includes harsh language and extreme violence. The Krays Directed by Peter Medak; written by Philip Ridley; director of photography, Alex Thompson; edited by Martin Walsh; music by Michael Kamen; production designer, Michael Pickwoad; produced by Dominic Anciano and Ray Burdis; released by Miramax Films. Running time: 119 minutes. This film is rated R. Violet Kray . . . Billie Whitelaw Ronald Kray . . . Gary Kemp Reginald Kray . . . Martin Kemp Rose . . . Susan Fleetwood May . . . Charlotte Cornwell Frances . . . Kate Hardie Charlie Kray Sr. . . .

Alfred Lynch Jack (the Hat) McVitie . . . Tom Bell George Cornell . . . Steven Berkoff The Krays (1990) | The East End The East End Posted in: Crime , TV & Films . Tagged: Films , Gangsters , Kray Twins , Ronnie and Reggie Kray . “The Krays”, was a 1990 film based around the lives of two of the East End’s most infamous sons, Ronnie and Reggie Kray. Written by Philip Ridley and produced by Hungarian born filmmaker Peter Medak, the film starred real life brothers Gary and Martin Kemp of Spandau Ballet fame, together with the actress Billie Whitelaw who played their doting mother Violet. Whitelaw’s performance is central to the whole film as, in real life, Violet was the centre of the Kray Twins world. Indeed, throughout her life, Violet Kray could see no evil in her two sons, referring to them as ‘her beautiful boys’. The twins returned that adoration.

The cast is ably supported by such fine actors as Tom Bell who played their ill-fated accomplice Jack “The Hat” McVitie, and Jimmy Jewel who gives an excellent performance as the twins boxing fixated grandfather, “Cannonball” Lee. The early part of the film concentrates on the twins’ upbringing, and upon the influences various members of their family had upon their development. At all times throughout the film, the importance of the women who helped to shape their young lives is evident, whether though the performance of Billie Whitelaw, or Susan Fleetwood who plays their formidable Aunt Rose. As a result, the Kemp Brothers enter the film fairly late on. Whilst they make a fairly good job of acting in general, what is often missing is a sense of real menace. In case you should forget, both Kray Twins were imprisoned in 1969 after being found guilty of committing a murder each. They were just 34 years old, and it is this that is so difficult to convey in any biopic – the fact that these two relatively young men had much of East London crime in their control and ran a criminal empire by the simple means of using violence and terror against their enemies and victims.

The film attempts to remain true to events as they happened, so scenes such as Ronnie using a cutlass to slice a rival’s mouth open from ear to ear, and Reggie attacking two lads and beating them senseless for the ‘crime’ of talking to his wife are retained. The film is also reasonably well researched so that when we are watching the scene where Reggie has to stab Jack “The Hat” McVitie to death, it is because his gun jammed – which is exactly what happened in ‘real life’. At the time of writing, a new film based on the life of the Kray Twins is under production and is set to star actor Tom Hardy who has confirmed he has the challenging task of playing both brothers… Ronnie And Reggie Kray | The East End Ronnie and Reggie Kray Posted in: Crime , TV & Films . Tagged: Films , Gangsters , Kray Twins , Ronnie and Reggie Kray . “The Krays”, was a 1990 film based around the lives of two of the East End’s most infamous sons, Ronnie and Reggie Kray.

Written by Philip Ridley and produced by Hungarian born filmmaker Peter Medak, the film starred real life brothers Gary and Martin Kemp of Spandau Ballet fame, together with the actress Billie Whitelaw who played their doting mother Violet. Whitelaw’s performance is central to the whole film as, in real life, Violet was the centre of the Kray Twins world. Indeed, throughout her life, Violet Kray could see no evil in her two sons, referring to them as ‘her beautiful boys’. The twins returned that adoration. The cast is ably supported by such fine actors as Tom Bell who played their ill-fated accomplice Jack “The Hat” McVitie, and Jimmy Jewel who gives an excellent performance as the twins boxing fixated grandfather, “Cannonball” Lee. The early part of the film concentrates on the twins’ upbringing, and upon the influences various members of their family had upon their development. At all times throughout the film, the importance of the women who helped to shape their young lives is evident, whether though the performance of Billie Whitelaw, or Susan Fleetwood who plays their formidable Aunt Rose. As a result, the Kemp Brothers enter the film fairly late on.

Whilst they make a fairly good job of acting in general, what is often missing is a sense of real menace. In case you should forget, both Kray Twins were imprisoned in 1969 after being found guilty of committing a murder each. They were just 34 years old, and it is this that is so difficult to convey in any biopic – the fact that these two relatively young men had much of East London crime in their control and ran a criminal empire by the simple means of using violence and terror against their enemies and victims. The film attempts to remain true to events as they happened, so scenes such as Ronnie using a cutlass to slice a rival’s mouth open from ear to ear, and Reggie attacking two lads and beating them senseless for the ‘crime’ of talking to his wife are retained. The film is also reasonably well researched so that when we are watching the scene where Reggie has to stab Jack “The Hat” McVitie to death, it is because his gun jammed – which is exactly what happened in ‘real life’.

At the time of writing, a new film based on the life of the Kray Twins is under production and is set to star actor Tom Hardy who has confirmed he has the challenging task of playing both brothers… Posted in: Crime . Tagged: Crime , Gangsters , Kray Twins , Organised Crime , Ronnie and Reggie Kray , Whitechapel . So much has been written about the notoriety of the Kray Twins that it is difficult to separate fact from fiction, but the salient points of the lifestyle and rise to fame of the East End ‘Firm’ are detailed below. Ronnie Kray, together with his twin brother Reggie grew up in the East End during wartime. The twins had a Romany/Jewish background and their father, Charles, spent most of the time during war years avoiding armed service by keeping on the move. As a result, the twins were raised by their mother, Violet. Violet was so fiercely protective of her ‘wonderful boys’ that she turned the family home in Vallance Road into a safe haven – a place that came to be known as ‘Fort Vallance’.

The twins’ grandfathers Cannonball Lee and Jimmy Kray came from a boxing background and were to prove hugely influential upon the twin boys. Ronnie and Reggie, together with their elder brother Charles became accomplished boxers, and as a result of unlicensed bouts against local rivals, the twins’ street reputations became enhanced. From the very beginning it became apparent that the twins strength was their fierce allegiance to each other – if you picked a fight with Reggie, then you were picking a fight with Ronnie and vice versa. However, it became apparent from an early age that Ron was somewhat slower and less flamboyant than his brother. Ronnie soon began to develop his own fantasy world that centred on a desire for unquestioning leadership. Their national service was spent mainly in the Military Prison for assaulting NCOs or going AWOL, and they eventually emerged from Shepton Mallet military prison well prepared for a lifetime of challenging any form of authority. As a result of the many disputes over what they saw as their ‘territory’, the twins decided to stake a claim in a local business.

By the time the twins had reached the age of 20, they had taken over a local billiard hall, The Regal, on the Mile End Road and entered a hazy area between security and extortion. While he was at the billiard hall, Ronnie began to play out the most dominant of his many fantasies, that of being a gangster. It was in 1954 that Ronnie cutlassed members of a Maltese gang that tried to extract protection money from them, and their reputation for violence was established. The twins began to gather a collection of villains around them, with Ronnie dreaming of creating his own empire, a powerful criminal “Firm”, with him and Reggie at the head. Ronnie soon became known to his followers as “the Colonel”. The Krays soon linked up with Billy Hill, who introduced them to gambling just in time for the legalisation of the industry in 1961. Ronnie and Reggie moved up West – and most of Ron’s fantasies of creating his own crime empire started to come true. The increasing levels of violence associated with the Krays dealings continued.

Whether it was to impose their control over clubland or dealing with recurring feuds between rival gangs, the twins had reputations to protect. As The Krays bought their way into clubs and gambling establishments in the West and East Ends of London, they started to gain some legitimacy by befriending sportsmen and showbiz personalities, and started to become linked with the 1960’s socialite scene. The Kray twins had many criminal contacts all over Britain and had worked hard to buy their protection from contacts in many police stations, presenting an outward appearance of being smart, well-connected – and untouchable. However, it soon became apparent that Ronnie was only able to thrive on conflict, and things were coming to a head. In 1966, Ronnie marched into the Blind Beggar pub saloon bar and shot dead George Cornell, an old enemy in full view of the occupants. Despite every detail of the killing being seen, the twins influence and control over the local population meant that no one would come forward to act as a witness and identify the murderer to the police. As the Sixties progressed, Ronnie and Reggie became even more convinced of their immunity from any authority.

Together, they arranged the escape of Frank “Mad Axeman” Mitchell from Dartmoor Prison (and were later acquitted of his murder). They even contemplated forming an alliance with the Mafia, and looked abroad to expand. But Ronnie’s mental condition was deteriorating and the responsibility for running the firm fell to Reggie, who remained completely devoted to his brother. However after his wife, Frances Shea, committed suicide, Reggie went to pieces, and with Ronnie’s encouragement he murdered a troublesome fringe member of the firm. The killing of Jack (“the Hat”) McVitie was to be a turning-point. According to one of their former henchmen, Albert Donoghue, Ronnie egged his brother on to kill Jack “The Hat” McVitie, a small time crook and irritant to the brothers. “I’ve done mine,” Ronnie supposedly told Reggie. “About time you done yours.” McVitie had been lured to a party in Hackney, where he was accused of damaging the Kray name, and stabbed to death by Reggie. Members of the Firm were left to clean up the mess while the body was disposed of. The twins could no longer be ignored, and under pressure The Firm began to crumble.

Following a police investigation which took the Krays off the streets (as the result of evidence provided by an informer working for the United States Treasury) witnesses to the killings of both Cornell and McVitie were found. Many of their own gang of thieves and hard men gave evidence against the twins when they finally appeared at the Old Bailey at what was seen as a show trial in 1969. The sentencing judge, Mr Justice Melford Stevenson passed sentence that they should be jailed for life, with a recommendation that they serve at least 30 years. Ronnie, was eventually certified a paranoid schizophrenic in 1979 and served out his sentence heavily medicated in Broadmoor. Billie Whitelaw: Krays killed for love of Mum | Interviews | Roger Ebert Billie Whitelaw: Krays killed for love of Mum by Roger Ebert Tweet London had never seen anything quite like the brothers Kray, the sadistic twins who ran a protection empire and palled around with cafe society. They became celebrities of a sort. British professional criminals followed a more genteel tradition until the Krays came along in the 1950s and early 1960s.

You might have gotten bashed on the head or even, after great provocation, shot dead, but until the Krays, it was unlikely anyone would pull out a sword and redecorate your face. The Krays got a reputation for performing their sickest crimes themselves, and then turning up, immaculately dressed, at posh nightclubs. The British tabloids made an industry out of them, but what nobody could quite believe was that they really did go back home every night to the humble East End semi-detached home they shared with their Cockney mom. The genius of " The Krays ," Peter Medak 's new film about the most notorious villains of modern British crime, is that the movie is not simply a catalog of stabbings, garrotings and bloodletting. It goes deeper than into the twisted pathology of twins whose faces would light up with joy when their mom told them they looked just like proper gentlemen. Reggie and Ronnie, their names were.

Ronnie was the instigator, the one who got off on killing, and Reggie was the weaker one who killed only once, under Ronnie's insistent pressure, but at the time there was nothing to choose between them: They were the two most feared men in the East End. And their mother, Violet, was treated very, very nicely, wherever she went. "She was the most important love interest in their lives," Billie Whitelaw was musing one afternoon after the movie's North American premiere. Whitelaw is the distinguished British actress who is known as the foremost interpreter of the works of Samuel Beckett, and she plays Mother Kray in the movie. It's quite a performance. "Violet was just as well-known as the twins," she said, "but for different reasons. She was a classic East End mother figure. And the whole focus of the movie is domestic. Violet and her boys. There's a most horrific film to be made about the Krays, because what Peter Medak has done is just the tip of the iceberg of the atrocities they committed. If you wanted to make a gory horror movie out of the Krays, it's all there to make.

But Peter has actually made a domestic film about a mother and her two sons." In " The Krays " (opening Friday in Chicago at the Fine Arts), Violet cheerfully rules her husband; her other son, Charlie, and all the neighbors and relatives. She's a forcible, opinionated, strong-willed woman who knows when she holds her twins for the first time that they're destined to be special. As children, they were mean and violent, and forged a strange bond of twinship that distrusted the rest of the world - except for Violet. She could see no evil in them. She doted even on their "business," which all London knew was extortion. In the film, the Krays are played by brothers, Gary and Martin Kemp, whose sleek, good looks seem right at home in expensive suits and polished shoes. Their performances suggest an eerie quality to the twins - the notion that they are never entirely offstage, that everything they say is for effect, sometimes ironic effect, and that they are never more dangerous than when their oily politeness is on display. Whitelaw knew the twins at height of their powers. "I was working at the Theatre Workshop with Joan Littlewood," Whitelaw remembered, "and they were around then.

They actually offered Joan protection, but I think it was a courteous, nice protection. They loved theatricals." And yet the protection they were offering, I said, was basically protection against themselves. "I suppose so, yes. But they always wanted to be considered gentlemen. That was very important to them. They behaved with great courtesy. Their brother Charlie, who I know quite well, the oldest one, always behaved with enormous courtesy. And a number of the old gang members who were around when we shot the film were extremely polite on the set. They very much wanted to be considered gentlemen, and in their own way, they are, sending flowers, doing this, doing that, standing up when a lady came into the room." You've been quoted, I said, as telling Charlie you didn't know if you could get Violet quite right; you didn't know if you could do her justice in terms of how warm she was, and what a good mother she was. "I know that these three boys were besotted with their mother," Whitelaw said. "They all three of them loved her. In fact, everyone I've spoken to who knew Violet Kray loved her.

I was talking to Charlie about her very early on, in fact, and whenever I started to talk in detail about Violet, tears would come to his eyes. Even her brother loved her, and that's unusual, isn't it? For siblings to love one another, and I didn't know if I could be that lovable." Yet she gave birth to the most feared and violent London criminals of their time, twins who brought professional street violence to a city where the policemen didn't carry guns. Whitelaw smiled. "They always claimed that they only slashed, beat up and tortured their own - the gangs with which they were constantly warring. It has been said if the Krays were around today that they would clean up the drug scene, that they would have it under control. But perhaps the price would be too high to pay." We were talking in Whitelaw's hotel suite in Toronto, where the film had just played in the film festival. It arrived on this continent having set box-office records in England, where the Krays are still serving the long prison sentences that brought an end to their empire. The film is the Whitelaw's biggest hit to date.

She does most of her work on the stage, and her best-known films are probably "No Love for Johnnie" (1961), as the wife of ambitious politician Peter Finch , and "Charlie Bubbles" (1968), for which she won a British Film Award as the wife of philandering football fan Albert Finney . The central fact of her career has been her long association with the work of Samuel Beckett, the late, great, exiled Irish playwright, who chose her as the key interpreter of his work. For Medak, the director, the film is a career high. The Hungarian-born filmmaker, long in Britain, is best known for " The Ruling Class " (1972), starring Peter O'Toole as a very, very strange aristocrat, but Medak's career in recent years has included such unexpected material as " The Changeling " (1979) and " Zorro, the Gay Blade " (1981). The film works so well, I think, because it creates such a disturbing tension between the evil done by the Krays and the love they basked in at home.

Whitelaw's concern that she could not make Violet lovable enough is significant; how could a woman that lovable have produced - and doted on - the Krays? "Perhaps love is blind," she said. "Actually blind. I mean, I love my children to bits. I do, and I would fight tooth and nail like a tigress for my children. But a lot of mothers love their sons, and they don't turn out to be psychopathic torturers. I was astonished when I saw the film at how angry I seemed to get, at how often I lost my temper, and I think it was because, as an actress, the way my love was coming out was in fiercely protecting those boys." Do you have any theories about whether her love may have led them in the wrong direction - or were they simply bad seeds? "I've always thought the fact that they were twins had something to do with it. And the fact that one of the twins was a psychopath had a hell of a lot to do with it. There's no question that both of those boys are very bright.

If Reggie had been just one little chicken to come out of that egg, instead of two, I think he would have gone through the usual East End working-class pilfering - the bit of wheeling and dealing that goes on in all working-class areas - but he would have gone through that, and came out the other side. But Ronnie is a psychopath. And because of that, he had enormous influence on Reggie. `It's sad," Whitelaw said, "if you are going to feel sad about these men at all, that Ronnie, who was the one who instigated all these things, is kept in a hospital. He's kept under sedation, so he's quite happy. He's getting happy pills all the time, and he's allowed to see people within reason, whenever he wants to, and he sits in a room, and they have coffee and talk. But Reggie, who was the sane one, was put in an ordinary hard-core prison situation, and is now the one who is acutely depressed.

He is the one who now has great emotional and mental problems." And Violet sleeps beneath a huge marble stone that says, "Mother." Ronnie and Reggie Kray ''HATED'' Martin and Gary Kemp's The Krays biopic film - Mirror Online Ronnie and Reggie Kray ''HATED'' Martin and Gary Kemp's The Krays biopic film The gangland twins particularly disliked scenes in the 1990 movie in which their on-screen mother Violet swore Share Get celebs updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Could not subscribe, try again laterInvalid Email Video Loading Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8Cancel Play now Watch Next Ronnie and Reggie Kray were not people to get on the wrong side of. But Martin and Gary Kemp risked their wrath in 1990 when they portrayed the gangland twins in movie The Krays - and we've now learned the real-life brothers, who have both since passed away, "HATED" the Peter Medak-directed movie.

Maureen Flanagan, who used to do their mum's hair every week and was seen as the Kray twins' little sister, revealed the pair particularly disliked scenes in the film in which their on-screen mother Violet - who was played by Billie Whitelaw - swore. Former Kray insider reveals that the brothers ''HATED'' Martin and Gary Kemp's biopic film (Photo: ITV) Speaking on ITV's Lorraine, she said: "They hated the film. "When I first went after he'd had a DVD film sent into him [Ronnie] he said, 'I hate that film. How dare they allow our mother to swear. Our mother never swore in her life.' "I can guarantee that but they hated that." The Krays - Gary Kemp, Billie Whitelaw & Martin Kemp as Ronnie and Reggie Kray and their mum Violet Maureen also admitted she didn't think Martin and Gary's portrayal was realistic enough because the pair didn't "frighten" her when she watched the motion picture.

She added: "When I looked at the Kemp brothers I thought, 'I'll go to see the film but if they don't frighten me then they won't be Ronnie and Reggie Kray.' They had to have this menace and that aura about them. And they didn't frighten me." But Maureen - who has written a book, One of the Family: 40 Years with the Krays, which is out tomorrow - has high hopes for Tom Hardy's Krays movie Legend, in which the Hollywood actor plays both Ronnie and Reggie. Ronnie and Reggie Kray at home in London 1966 She said: "He's got everything spot on so it will be a good film." Despite the Kray twins' faults, Maureen insists the pair were always "very respectful to women" and while visiting Ronnie in prison once he made her move to the other side of the table so that she wouldn't have serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, who was in the same prison, in her eye-line.

Former Kray insider reveals that the brothers ''HATED'' Martin and Gary Kemp's biopic film (Photo: ITV) She added: "He came to the table and he saw Peter Sutcliffe on the next table and said, 'I don't want you sitting next to that sl*g.' "He said, 'Get up and walk around the table.' He didn't want me to be in the eyeline of Peter Sutcliffe." Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe (Photo: NICHOLAS RAZZELL) Like us on Facebook Most Read Most Recent Most Read Most Recent

Question: Who played Violet Kray, the mother, in the 1990 film ‘The Krays’?
Answer: BILLIE WHITELAW