A tale of two Hardys
Charismatic actor dazzling playing dual roles in gangster film Legend
Tom Hardy has never been one to turn down an acting challenge. Hell, he can’t resist turning regular roles into acting challenges — he is so charismatic he can act any role to within an inch of its life. From the pugilistic theatrics of Bronson (2008), and the laserfocused claustrophobia of Locke (2013), to turning a Batman villain into a vocal experiment.
The dual roles of Legend will probably go down as his greatest trick, at least until Hollywood finally gets around to that Multiplicity remake, or decides to do a big-screen Clone Wars adaptation with Hardy as every last one of the plastic-armoured goons, each one’s voice more fussedover and esoteric than the last. Disappointingly, however, unlike Hardy’s other films, Legend doesn’t have the good sense to just get out of his way; for whatever reason, it has convinced itself that a mere gangster tale is more important than Tom Hardy staring at you from both ends of the screen.
This specific gangster tale, written and directed by Brian Helgeland, concerns the Krays, a pair of legendary twins who made their mark on Swinging London with intimidation rackets, casinos and more than a little gang violence, becoming in the process not just crime lords but minor celebrities. Reggie Kray (Hardy-1), was the rational one, here portrayed as a bit of a hard case with a centre soft enough that he occasionally entertains a fantasy of going straight and having a normal life with eventual wife Frances (Emily Browning).
Ronnie Kray (Hardy-2), is a certified psychopath, equally as blasé about cracking skulls as he is about his homosexuality, something that might have been a bigger deal at the time had he not been so quick to whip out a pistol.
Hardy plays Reggie as the litmus paper for Ronnie, an efficiently beige way of revealing just how kooky the mad Kray twin really is. This would probably be more advisable if the whole thing wasn’t told — sloppily, but mainly — from Frances’s perspective, which flattens Ronnie into a lovable rogue with a twin-shaped millstone around his neck.
Sure, Ronnie is the type of guy to walk down the middle of the street with a cop car slowly following him, or to climb up a drain pipe and propose mere minutes after getting out of prison, but he’s also basically a wet blanket, there to remind Frances that a happy family isn’t exactly a gangster’s lot in life, and to lecture Reggie about how boring, underthe-radar gangstering is what pays the bills, not sexy parties and open violence.
It’s a double shame since Hardy’s Ronnie is one of the best pure comic performances ever put in a crime film, a man every bit as blunt and brutal as the hammer he uses to smash up a rival gang.
Distinguishable via droopy lip and a posture like a sack of potatoes tied to a flagpole, he’s plainly hilarious whether he’s angrily shouting down that same gang for failing to bring guns — “I came here for a proper shootout — like a Western!” he froths at the mouth before storming off — explaining his preference for Greek boys to an open-mouthed American mafioso or trying to embezzle money from his criminal enterprise to start a utopia in Africa.
He’d be a charming oddball if he wasn’t also clearly a homicidal mess, and Hardy perfectly balances this off-kilter persona, bringing equal magnetism to his slap-fights with Reggie as to the way he calmly drinks tea with his mother right after shooting a man in the head.
Ronnie is the one unquestionably unique, interesting part of Legend, so naturally they keep him as second-fiddle comic relief while Reggie and Frances enact the usual rise-and-fall arc, wrapped in a bit of ’60s British style.
By reining in Hardy’s wilder side, Helgeland manages to make a gangster tale with all the wild flair of a domestic drama, meandering about waiting for the bespectacled Kray to inject life whenever things threaten to get completely bogged down.
How you start with an epic crime tale and Tom Hardy at his most Hardy and end up with something this tepid, might be a more interesting story than the movie itself.