Legend (Brian Helgeland, 2015)

Tom Hardy in Legend

Reggie Kray / Ronnie Kray: Tom Hardy
Frances Shea: Emily Browning
"Nipper" Read: Christopher Eccleston
Leslie Payne: David Thewlis
Mad Teddy Smith: Taron Edgerton
Angelo Bruno: Chazz Palminteri
Charlie Richardson: Paul Bettany
Frank Shea: Colin Morgan
Mrs. Shea: Tara Fitzgerald
Albert Donoghue: Paul Anderson
Jack MacVitie: Sam Spruell
Violet Kray: Jane Wood

Director: Brian Helgeland
Screenplay: Brian Helgeland
Based on a book by John Pearson
Cinematography: Dick Pope
Production design: Tom Conroy
Music: Carter Burwell

Perhaps if Brian Helgeland's screenplay and direction had been stronger, Tom Hardy's performance as the Kray twins, Reggie and Ronnie, might have made more impact. Hardy is an always watchable actor, and he makes a sharp delineation between the two brothers, one psychotic and the other more charmingly deadly. But Helgeland has missed an opportunity to put the Krays in the context of their era: the "swinging London" of the 1960s. There are some superficial name-dropping attempts: Reggie's girlfriend, Frances Shea, spots Joan Collins in a nightclub, and there are some other pop notables on the scene. But the script is too preoccupied with Reggie's affair with and marriage to Frances to give the Krays' kind of gangsterism any larger significance, the way Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather films (1972, 1974, 1980) integrated the relationship of Michael and Kay Corleone into the greater social and political context. Helgeland also makes a serious misstep with a voiceover narration -- often a sign of weakness in screenplays, a suggestion that the writer hasn't worked out a way to provide exposition dramatically. That the narrator is Frances, who dies three-quarters of the way into the film, only compounds the error: Narrative by a dead person rarely works, except in fantasy films or in the sardonic context of Billy Wilder's Sunset Blvd. (1950). The device loses its point after Frances's death: Her function in the screenplay is first to humanize Reggie Kray -- the film lays on Carter Burwell's score a little too thickly in their love scenes -- and then to suggest that he has suddenly somehow lost his soul when he rapes and beats her. Ronnie is a one-note character throughout, with his retinue of lethal boyfriends, including a standout Taron Edgerton as the giggling "Mad Teddy" Smith. Hardy fills him with silent menace, but he's a good enough actor to make the decision to give him a false nose and to stuff his cheeks like Marlon Brando's in The Godfather (Coppola, 1972) all the more regrettable.

Life Is Sweet (Mike Leigh, 1990)

Alison Steadman and Timothy Spall in Life Is Sweet

Wendy: Alison Steadman
Andy: Jim Broadbent
Natalie: Claire Skinner
Nicola: Jane Horrocks
Patsy: Stephen Rea
Aubrey: Timothy Spall
Nicola's Lover: David Thewlis
Paula: Moya Brady

Director: Mike Leigh
Screenplay: Mike Leigh
Cinematography: Dick Pope
Production design: Alison Chitty
Music: Rachel Portman

In Life Is Sweet Mike Leigh switches his focus from the angry working class and soulless yuppies of High Hopes (1988) to the muddling-through lower middle class, coping with a world they never made but doggedly trying to make the best of it. Andy hates his work as a chef in an institutional kitchen, but he keeps on at it. Wendy, his wife, holds a couple of part-time jobs, one as a children's dancercise teacher, the other as a salesclerk in a children's clothing store. Her cheerful laugh hides disappointment and pain, some of it generated by their twin daughters. Natalie has short hair and works as a plumber, and we sense that there has been some concern from the parents about her lifestyle, though everyone maintains a façade of contentment. But Nicola has unkempt long hair and does nothing but lie about the house, snarling and smoking and mouthing left-wing slogans, and having slightly kinky sex with her boyfriend. Nicola is also bulimic, a disorder she hides from her parents, though her twin hears the vomiting through the thin row-house wall that separates their bedrooms, and Nicola has been hospitalized before. Despite this, the film is decidedly comic, partly because Andy and Wendy have friends who aren't always as helpful as they could be. Patsy persuades Andy to buy a rundown trailer that has been converted into a hamburger stand, with the idea that Andy can make enough money on weekends to eventually quit his job. Aubrey is trying to open a French restaurant with an Edith Piaf theme, the Regret Rien, and when his waitress decamps just before the opening he persuades Wendy to take her place. Disasters ensue, leaving the characters teetering on the line between hilarity and tragedy, as life in Leigh's film so often does. The "sweetness" in the film lies in the fact that Andy and Wendy are genuinely nice people who suffer fools gladly, even if they're their own daughters and friends (or each other). Leigh is never content to stick to formula, however, no matter how much the conventional logic of film comedy seems to demand it, so every moment of Life Is Sweet is likely to hold a surprise: The characters do and say things we wouldn't necessarily expect of them. The performances are uniformly brilliant, as we might expect of this particular roster of British actors, and Rachel Portman's lovely, almost subliminal score backs them up well.