How do you make a boring film about gangster twins in ‘60s London, one of whom is a violent, paranoid schizophrenic homosexual, and both of whom are played by Tom Hardy? Easy: neglect the violent, paranoid schizophrenic homosexual and play up the other one’s girlfriend. While you’re at it, give her grandiose voiceover bits like “It was time for the Krays to enter into the secret history of the 1960s” and how we eventually become “the ghosts of the people we once thought we were.” Writer-director Brian Helgeland gives us violence without felt menace, doomed romance without felt desperation, and decadence without felt pleasure. The result is weirdly tasteful for a film that includes secret gay orgies involving members of the House of Lords, and weirdly pedestrian for a story about a London criminal who dreams of building a Utopian city in Nigeria. There is, however, one wincingly nasty fight involving brass knuckles and hammers. (2015) — Matthew Lickona
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