Legend

Brian Helgeland directed this 2015 British-French biographical crime thriller, adapting John Pearson's "The Profession of Violence," subtitled "The Rise and Fall of the Kray Twins." Tom Hardy plays both twins, Ronald and Reginald Kray, who ran much of London's criminal underworld in the 1960s. Reggie, once a boxer, wants to widen his hold on the city's underworld. Ronnie has paranoid schizophrenia and sits in a psychiatric hospital until Reggie gets him released. Side by side, the brothers take over nightclubs and other illegal ventures by beating and extorting their way in. Reggie courts Frances Shea (Emily Browning), the sister of his driver, and marries her, though his crimes and Ronnie's aggression soon strain the marriage. To reach further, the twins cut a deal with the American Mafia through Angelo Bruno (Chazz Palminteri). At Scotland Yard, Detective Leonard "Nipper" Read (Christopher Eccleston) opens an investigation meant to bring them to justice. What the film lays out in detail is the brothers' ascent, their collapse, the fights between them, and the mark they left on criminal London of that decade.