LEGEND

September is traditionally a fallow period on the movie calendar. The summer blockbusters have been and gone, but it’s still too early for the studios to release their contenders for awards season. So in all honesty, calling Legend the best movie of the week says more about the other new releases than it does about Brian Helgeland’s generic gangster flick. It’s only lifted from mediocrity through a phenomenal twin turn from Tom Hardy, playing both of the notorious Kray twins. As an actor with form playing unhinged criminals, Hardy is utterly mesmerising, but the rest of this by-the-numbers biopic lacks any of the surreal stylistic idiosyncrasies that made Bronson (2008) so compelling. In spite of the title, Legend doesn’t romanticise the Krays or excuse their psychotic behaviour, but it offers nothing that we haven’t seen before. You slag.