With a real sense of the vibe and mood of London during the swinging sixties running through the movie this is a stylishly told tale of the notorious Kray twins who controlled most of the East End gangland scene in the late 1950’s and through most of the 1960’s but while watching it I somehow felt that the movie lacked some substance and was it was not for the superb performance of Tom Hardy, particularly as the unbalanced Ronnie Kray, this would just have been another average thriller.

Maybe this is where my problems with the movie stem from because it looks like Ronnie would have been the more interesting focus but it’s Reggie, and in particular his relationship with his first wife Frances that takes the main focus of the movie and her narrative voice over is completely unnecessary turing what should be a gangland tale into some form of Beauty and The Beast love story.

Director Brian Hangeland has obviously taken some notes from Martin Scorsese movies as this sometimes feels like a homage to Goodfellas but lacks the writing or directing to match that classic and the lack of backstory or build up means that, unless you know about or have read about the Krays, there is no exposition to show why the Krays were the characters that they were. Their henchmen and gang members are mainly just faces and names and there is no character development of their mother Violet who was such an integral part of their life.

There are some bright spots with David Thewlis sometimes stealing scenes as the slimy fixer Leslie Payne and some good but all too brief Chazz Palmentieri appearances as Angelo Bruno, a go between for Meyer Lansky and the American mob (one of the best scenes in the whole movie involves this character, Ronnie Kray and a blunt announcement of his sexuality preferences)

Overall the movie is entertaining and well worth a watch but it fails to raise itself to it’s true potential levels and if you have knowledge of the Krays there’s so much more that could have been done with the material.

DJ Speaks Rating: 6 out of 10