Movie: Legend
Actor From Previous Movie: Tara Fitzgerald (Gloria, Mrs. Shea)
Where to Watch: DVD
I wanted to like this movie so badly. Rewind to last summer when I first saw the trailer before Southpaw. It was love at first sight. Between the 1960’s setting, the frantic energy of the trailer, and my new found love for Tom Hardy, this was everything I could want in a movie. On my breaks at work (at an AMC theater) I would sneak into Southpaw during previews to watch the trailer over and over. In my excitement I even read the biography, The Profession of Violence, which inspired the film. Then the reviews started coming out. The movie was doing so poorly that it never even got a true wide release, and I was heartbroken that I wouldn’t get the chance to see one of my most personally anticipated movies of the year. So you can see how even though I knew the movie was not going to be very good, my hopes were still far too high. And Legend did not deliver.
The movie was just kind of a mess. It couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be a gangster film or a biopic. The pacing felt painfully slow. Narration in movies is usually iffy at best, but then making it from the perspective of such a dull and minor character was a huge mistake. For the character who is supposed to be the audience’s bridge into the world of the Krays, Frances (Emily Browning) isn’t particularly engaging. Her romance with Reggie is cute, but not particularly interesting. Even Ronnie’s outbursts got stale after awhile because they became too predictable. You came to expect him to say something outrageous and do something violent, even if you didn’t know what exactly.
There were things I liked though! Obviously Tom Hardy did a wonderful job playing the infamous twins. He really made each one a distinct and complete character. Ronnie was more compelling and interesting to watch because of how unpredictable he was, but Hardy managed to make the more composed and fiercely loyal Reggie lovely to watch. Any scene with both twins together showed just how differently he played them, especially in their facial expressions. As good as Tom Hardy was, Taron Egerton was the surprise scene stealer. Whether cackling manically or posing as the picture of perfection, his portrayal of the psychopathic Mad Teddy Smith was the best thing about the entire movie.
It’s time that I brought up the Bechdel Test. In the past few weeks I have found myself increasingly frustrated with Hollywood and the failure to pass this simple test, especially in movies that were enjoyable and had otherwise positive female representation (I’m looking at you, Deadpool and Hail, Caesar!). The cartoonist Alison Bechdel joked about this idea of a woman not seeing movies unless they met three requirements: The film has at least two female characters, they both speak to each other, and they speak about anything other than a man. Thus the test was born. The test should be so easy to pass and yet many films don’t. So for the rest of my posts I’m going to end with assessments of how each film passes or fails the Bechdel Test.
Bechdel Assesment: Pass, but just barely. The few times Frances speaks to her mother it’s about Reggie. There is a scene where the Krays’ mother is criticizing Frances on her ability to make tea. She mumbles a response. Hardly a conversation, but they do kind of interact.
good job...
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