Following in the footsteps of such legendary actors as Edward Norton, Bette Davis, Hayley Mills, and Lindsay Lohan, Tom Hardy will star alongside himself in the upcoming gangster film Legend. (This is not to be confused with the 1985 Ridley Scott fantasy starring Tim Curry and Tom Cruise.) In it, Hardy is Ronnie and Reggie Kray, real-life English gangster twins and nightclub owners who hobnobbed with the celebrities of the ’50s and ’60s while doing all the other typical things that gangsters do.
Set to Roy Orbison’s “Running Scared,” the trailer feels enticing if a little familiar, showing both Hardys (one with glasses, one without) glowering intensely while engaging in such gangster pastimes as intimidating their foes by hanging them over the sides of buildings and emptying out suitcases full of cash.
But there are a few things that make this project more intriguing than such failed attempts at reviving the gangster film as the terrible, cartoonish Gangster Squad. For one, there are two Tom Hardys. Second, the writer-director of Legend is Brian Helgeland, the same guy who wrote the terrific neo-noir L.A. Confidential and adapted Mystic River. (He also wrote and directed the stodgy 42, but nobody’s perfect.) And finally, the subject itself: There aren’t too many English entries in the gangster canon. Legend opens in the U.K. in September, though there is no word yet on when it will get a release stateside.
