LEGEND

2015 was the year of Krays films and the one I anticipated was LEGEND, starring as it did Tom Hardy and both Ronnie and Reggie, beloved 1960s East End gangsters who infiltrated the highest levels of English society until they finally got banged up.  But I'm sad to say that the movie is boring to the point of switching off, bar a few good set pieces.  Unlike most critics I don't think it's the fault of Hardy.  Some have called his portrayal of Ronnie - a heavily doped up, heavy drinking, violent paranoid schizophrenic - too broad.  On the contrary, from the books I've read and documentaries I've watched, Hardy seems to get Ronnie just right. He loved his brother. He loved being a gangster. He loved the protection his aristo lover gave him.  But he was very very sick and almost impossible to control. I think there's no doubt that Reggie would have had a long and successful career as a criminal if it weren't for his brother running around with impossibly ambitious American schemes and generally running successful ventures into the ground.  And then, of course, there were the murders. That Hardy also manages to portray Reggie is a testament to his skill at essaying a subtler but still menacing character who was unfailingly loyal to his brother, even at the expense of his tragically doomed wife Frances.

THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1 2 3 (2009) - full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

For all its hi-fi sets, frenetic chase scenes, shouted ultimatums and heavyweight cast, THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1 2 3 is a movie that fails to engage. It's like the TRANSFORMERS 2 of heist movies - so full of high-voltage action shots that plot, character and audience empathy are flushed down the toilet. Are we surprised? After all, the movie has been remade by the ultimate Lads Mag Director, Tony Scott, of TOP GUN fame and DOMINO and DEJA VU mediocrity. But maybe I am a bit surprised to find that this utterly predictable movie was written by the man who wrote LA CONFIDENTIAL. Essentially, the movie is about a psychopath (John Travolta chewing up the scenery) who boards a New York metro train, takes the passengers hostage and demands a bunch of money. He forms a weird relationship with a rail dispatcher with a shady past (Denzel Washington), and spurns the attentions of the cops (John Turturro) and the Mayor (James Gandolfini). The movie could've been so much better - a fracked up psychological cat-and-mouse game between hostage-taker and dispatcher - a discourse on the corruption of politicians and the police. On a technical level, it should've evoked the claustrophobia of the hijacked metro-cab and the wider menace of The City. In the end, it's all just a convenient hook to hang a chase scene on. Weak, weak, weak. Go watch INSIDE MAN instead.

THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1 2 3 is on release in the USA, Egypt, Kuwait, Lebanon, Singapore, South Korea, UAE, Canada, the Philippines, Taiwan and Argentina. It opens in the final week of July in the UK, Greece, Malaysia, Austria, Spain, Belgium, France, Morocco, Switzerland, Israel, Kazakhstan, Finland and Lithuania. It opens on August 6th in Iceland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Romania. It opens on August 13th in the Czech Republic. It opens on September 4th in Slovakia, Brazil, Japan and Mexico. It opens on September 11th in Bulgaria; on September 17th in Cyprus, Portugal and Italy.

THE ORDER - skewered by its central conceit

THE ORDER features Heath Ledger and Mark Addy as two Catholic priests whose order specialises in exorcisms and other demon-related shenanigans. They go to Rome to investigate the suspicious death of the head of their order. Tagging along, is a mentally unstable girl called Mara who, of course, has the hots for the younger of the priests, Alex. The fact that they stumble upon, and the central conceit of the movie, is that sinners have discovered a loop-hole to get into heaven. Instead of repenting, they simply get a Sin Eater to literally ingest all their bad deeds so that they can ascend with a pure soul. Neat! However, the current Sin-Eater (Benno Fuermann) wants Alex (Ledger) to take over, goading him into eating the sin of suicide so that Mara (who by now he is boffing) can go to heaven. It all ends in rather bleak and messy manner.

Insofar as this movie works at all, it works as a thriller as we try and uncover the true allegiance of various shady characters. However, on the whole, it's a dismal failure. I think the problem has to do with the central concept of the Sin Eater. The CGI depiction of the sin-eating is ridiculous and totally undermines any sense of horror or peril. It doesn't help that writer-director Brian Helgeland (of LA CONFIDENTIAL fame) tacks on a completely unsuspenseful love story.

At any rate, the movie plays like a pastiche of THE EXORCIST or THE OMEN and is definitely one to avoid.

THE ORDER aka THE SIN EATER was released in 2003 and is available on DVD and on iTunes.