Stylish but barely mediocre overall

an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

True story - Set in 1960's London. Legend is a classic British gangster thriller, tells the rise and fall of London's most notorious gangsters, Reggie and Ronnie Kray. Both roles were very convincingly portrayed by Tom Hardy, I frequently forgot that both roles were the same actor.There are loads of graphically violent scenes, look out for the bar fight where the brothers are facing off a rival gang. Ronnie, the paranoid schizophrenic, walks out and immediately returns with two hammers and all hell breaks loose! Very highly recommended.

Tom Hardy is Brilliant in this and after a while you forget that he is acting both roles as Reggie and Ronnie. Nothing much new in this apart from the tragedy of Reggie's wife Frances and that is the slant that they put on this otherwise well known story, but it is in fact Hardy's portrayal of Ronnie that is most outstanding. he captures the true madness of the man without becoming a caricature.His portrayal of Reggie was also pretty much spot on and showed how he struggled with wanting to be a successful businessman but unable to escape his violent side.Without Tom Hardy's exceptional acting though the movie would have been pretty dull.

Some years after they died, Reggie Kray and his more psychotic twin brother Ronnie still attract attention.They ruled the London underworld in the 1960s and attracted glamour through celebrities as well as the attention of the police. They used threats and violence to establish a foothold to run nightclubs and operate protection rackets. Dogged detective Nipper Read tried for years to get the twins behind bars.Tom Hardy plays both roles. Reggie is the more straightforward gangster, level headed, he falls in love but still prone to bouts of violence. Ronnie suffered from complex schizophrenia, he was unhinged, homosexual and could fly off the handle very easily.Brian Helgeland wrote and directed this rather muddled film. Apart from the brothers and Reg's romance with Frances, most of the characters are caricatured and the story flatly portrayed which needed a heavy voice over. Christopher Eccleston is wasted as Nipper Read and the third Kray brother is never mentioned.Peter Medak's 1990 film The Krays which was more low budget tried at least to aim higher. It showed the brothers coming up through the ranks as gangsters and the enemies they made, we see them getting into trouble during National Service and we also see a more complex relationship they has with their mother.

This movie is not bad, and Tom Hardy is a great actor, however......... It is advertised as the 'TRUE' story and biopic of the Kray twins but the movie is filled with inaccuracies (which of course I realise is done in films to add drama etc, but I believe if that is the case it should be advertised with the words 'based on the lives of....' included) I personally found the film quite slow-paced at times, and with a running time of over 2 hours, I think the film could have easily lost at least 30 mins and still worked, it was very drawn out and I noticed I wasn't the only one in the cinema who broke out into a yawn. As I mentioned earlier, Tom Hardy is a great actor and his portrayal of both Ronnie and Reggie Kray was very impressive, and I thought was more realistic than the portrayal of the twins by the Kemps in the 1990 film 'The Krays'. It is not a bad film and, overlooking the inaccuracies, gives a good insight for those unfamiliar with the truth, but could have, and should have, dealt more with the lives and power the Krays had over the east end of London in the 60's as well as their eventual downfall. Worth watching but I'd recommend you wait 'til it comes out on Sky or TV.