I approached
this film about the infamous Kray twins with a lot of caution. Reviews about it
has been mixed at best. Still I entered the film armed with a love of gangster
movies and a deep appreciation of Tom Hardy’s acting talent. It cannot be that
bad, I thought, probably a bit too violent or something. I love true stories –
and it doesn’t come much gorier than the Krays – so all in all it should be a
good watch. It very soon turned out that Tom Hardys acting was literally the
only thing that was going to get me through to the end of the film. I have been
flipping through some reviews of the film and it turns out that I (along with
the film as it turns out) suffer a great deal from lack of knowledge of the
Kray story. Well it just goes to show doesn’t it, if you don’t have a really
good story, all the rest of the talent involved can only get the film so far…
Basically
the film tells the story of notorious London gangsters and identical twins Ronnie
and Reggie Kray. Told from the perspective of Frances, the wife of Reggie, the
story charts the rise to power of the twins and their ultimate fall from it –
the latter due in no small part to Ronnie Krays mental health issues…
Now, like I
said I only know bits and pieces about the Kray story. But I do have a sense of
why people would say that. Because watching the film, from a completely outside
perspective as it were, I could feel bits and pieces missing although I did not
know what they were. I mean, to put it in a nutshell, the film does
give some small detail of the twins dealings with other gangs, their ownership
of various nightclubs and casinos and hints at dealings with the police but in
all honesty it shows absolutely and categorically nothing that would warrant
them being accuse of having a criminal empire. I mean wheeler dealers yes. Not
an empire though. Don’t get me wrong, when the time comes the film doesn’t
shirk from showing violence. In fact the violence contains, in my humble opinion,
some of the best bits of the film (I am the type of girl who a day later is
still smiling at the line – I have a joke for you. Paranoid schizophrenic walks
into a pub…- ). Instead, the film
centralizes by and large on (what else) the relationship between Reggie and
Frances with Ronnie as something cross between comic relief and the impending
doom that will ultimately be the undoing of them all (ultimately he is both).
Again, this is a sensible choice in a way – Reggie was the more charismatic
twin who was better at… Well better at being alive to be honest. But he wasn’t
exactly boy scout of the year either. It enhances his struggle with his
increasingly unhinged brother to have a positive light shone on him through the
eyes of Frances. It harks back to that age old story of the gangster, trying to
be good but ultimately being unable to avoid his past. Which would be all very
well and good if we had a clearer, more grim and dire picture of what this evil
empire the twins lived in was all about. Cue the complaints about how
unfaithful to actual events the film is. I can sense what they left out. A couple
of hinted talks with American mafia bosses and a few drunken brawls really
don’t cut it.
And if the
real Kray twins are left underdeveloped by the script, poor Frances definitely
is. She is slightly reduced as your typical Mol. Your typical East End girl.
There is clearly more to her than that, which is evident by how her story ends,
but the film doesn’t do a very good job into going into detail about her. She
mainly seems to exist to cast the positive light of love onto Reggie Kray. Now
Reggie Kray is also, to be fair, a bit of an offshoot of a certain type – or at
least in this film he is portrayed as such. He is the lovable rogue with street
smarts and a flair for business. Every other British gangster film has one of
them in it. The difference here of course is that Tom Hardy plays him perfectly,
to an absolute T. What every other British gangster film doesn’t have, it needs
to be said, is Ronnie Kray. Ronnie Kray is a paranoid schizophrenic who is left
at the head of the family business when Reggie has to go into jail to serve out
the tail end of a sentence. Already both eccentric and highly suspicious (all
this despite medication, which he takes sporadically) I will leave you to
discover how Ronnie unravels and how he brings the downfall of most if not all
around him. Hardy portrays both twins with fluidity and conviction, so much so
that you positively cringe at Ronnie’s antics for Reggie’s sake, completely
forgetting that they are in actual fact the same person. Boy is this film a
showcase of acting talent!
Violence is
a strange one isn’t it… I honestly think at the end of the day it’s about
striking a balance. I mean if you check out my review of The Revenant on Film
Debate, you will find me complaining there was far too much violence. Now I
have sort of ended up saying there is not enough. I think the problem here is
that the story is in fact a well-known story of two very violent gangsters.
They are almost part of the fabric of London. Turning their story into one they
could have been cut out of and replaced with any gangster type from any British
gangster film anywhere really, really takes something essential and important
away from the films potential. We are left to the talent of Hardy, who uses
these two characters a lot better in delivering the lines given to him and
giving us a hint of what the film could have been…
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