Those were the Krays, my friend... (The Krays (DVD))

Member Name: hogsflesh

Product:	The Krays (DVD)
Date:	07/11/01 (859 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: see opinion

Disadvantages: see opinion

The Kray Twins, Ronnie and Reggie, were, as I'm sure we all know, a couple of violent thugs who ran a badly organised criminal empire in London's East End in the 1960s. For some reason they became well known, getting to hang out with celebrities like Judy Garland, and having their photo taken by David Bailey. After a few years they were arrested and spent the rest of their lives in prison. In spite of various campaigns, neither was released. Ronnie died in 1995, and Reggie just last year.

Somehow, the Krays have achieved legendary status in Britain. The whole of Sixties Gangland London exerts a powerful fascination over people today (as witness Mad Frankie Fraser's current celebrity), and the Krays will always be seen as the kings of the era. There may have been gangs that were better organised, or more powerful, but Ron and Reg are the most famous and always will be.

In 1990 this film was released, purporting to tell the story of the Krays. It follows their progress from birth, through childhood, their disastrous National Service, and their careers as crime lords. It was directed by Peter Medak (who I've never heard of), and starred Billie Whitelaw as Violet Kray, the mother, and Gary and Martin Kemp, from Spandau Ballet, as the twins themselves.

Is it any good? Well, I suppose if viewed from a purely cinematic point of view it isn't entirely bad. The direction and photography are pretty good - it looks pretty stylish throughout. The dialogue isn't terrible. Some of the acting is very good, notably Billie Whitelaw. Tom Bell is good as Jack The Hat McVitie, the Krays' most famous victim, living up to the popular image of the man. Unfortunately, Gary Kemp, as Ronnie Kray, is really not up to the job at all. Martin Kemp (the one who turned up in Eastenders) isn't too bad as Reg. Ron is a far more complex character, but they let the worst actor of the two play him instead of Reg, the easier part. Fools. The oth
er notable performance is Steven Berkoff, who plays the Krays' second most famous victim, George Cornell. I have never seen a more rampant example of ludicrous over-acting in a supposedly serious film - he had me in stitches pretty much every time he appeared.

The film attempts to push the whole family aspect of the twins, especially their relationship with their mother. They're always surrounded by a gaggle of older, female relatives, and keep the sordid truth of their activities secret from them (or at least that's the implication). This family emphasis isn't bad, and the mother and the aunts are the most interesting characters in the film, but the film does seem to try to set itself up as an English Godfather a bit too obviously. A sequence at the end, where it cuts from Violet watching TV and being upset by a documentary to the twins committing their famous murders and back again, repeatedly, is an obvious imitation of the sequence at the end of The Godfather where the murders of Al Pacino's enemies are interspersed with scenes of the baptism of his child. Such pretensions are laughable - this film is no match for The Godfather, in much the same way as the real life exploits of the Krays were no match for those of organised criminals in the USA.

There are other problems, too. The film makes extremely half-hearted attempts to explain why the Krays turned out the way they did, but they really are so half-hearted you have to wonder why they bothered. There are hints that maybe the huge social upheaval of the war was a factor, but this isn't explained properly at all. Likewise, while on National Service the twins end up in prison for attacking their drill sergeant - when in prison they encounter Michael Elphick, who, like some malign Ben Kenobi, tells them how to become successful criminals. So what are the film-makers trying to say here? That National Service was bad? That locking up young criminals only teaches them to bec
ome hardened criminals? That we shouldn't trust Michael Elphick? What? Nothing is explored in anything like enough detail.

Yet another thing wrong is the incidental music. We're treated to heavy handed strings and piano chords, underlining acts of violence in the most clumsy and obvious way imaginable. Martin Scorsese has shown how effective contemporary pop music can be in gangster films, and surely, apart from gangsters, the thing Sixties London is most famous for is music. Why was there no pop music? They could have used Joe Meek, Alma Cogan, The Kinks, anything! But they don't.

And the general story structure is too disjointed. There are three main strands to the story - the Krays' relationship to their family, Reg's relationship with his wife, and Ron's increasingly violent behaviour. But they throw in other bits and pieces that are never resolved properly. At one point, American crime bosses come over to propose a business deal with the twins. We never see them again. Did they pull out? Was the deal squashed when the Krays went to prison? I think there really was a meeting with representatives of the American mob, but I don't see that it really has much of a place in this film, unless the film-makers just wanted some American accents on screen for a few minutes to help sales overseas. All in all the film is a bit of a mess.

So essentially this film is just a mediocre gangster movie about a pair of mediocre gangsters. But there's something about it that bothers me. The film seems to completely lack any kind of moral standpoint. In The Godfather, Goodfellas, even Reservoir Dogs, you definitely get the idea that the film-makers realise that their characters are inherently wrong, but not in the Krays.

In fact, the film bizarrely sets out to almost whitewash them. Yes, we get to see the Krays doing bad things, but only to other bad people. (This reinforcing the myth that they "only hurt their
own kind".) Cornell and McVitie are criminals, as are the guys in a pub that the gang sprays with machine gun fire. At some point Ron starts a fight with a guy in a nightclub because he's jealous of Reg, who's talking to a girl. But it turns out that the guy he picks on has a flick knife, so he must be a criminal too, so that makes it OK when Ronnie carves his face up with a sword. We never see any of the normal, innocent businessmen who were threatened into paying the Krays, or those who were tortured when they refused to. There are no victims of the Krays' crimes in the film except other criminals.

In addition to which, other modern myths about the Krays are thrown at us, time and time again. They are seen giving money to charity a lot, as if they really were some kind of Robin Hood organisation. In fact, it's their constant charity work that seems to enrage Cornell, thus sparking off the confrontations that lead to his death. (You see? Cornell is a bad man, because he doesn't do work for charity, and scorns those who do. The Krays are right to kill him!)

And the way the violence is filmed just adds to the general feeling of unpleasantness. There are a lot of slow motion shots, lots of close-ups of Ronnie's face grinning insanely as he (for instance) rams a sword through a man's hand. The violence is filmed in such a way as to excite the audience. This is more like watching Die Hard than Goodfellas - in a film like this, the violence should be harrowing for the audience, instead it's just entertaining. A successful screen villain in a Rambo-style shoot em up could get away with this kind of thing, and I wouldn't mind at all. The Krays, however, were real people, and their victims, many of whom are still alive, were also real, and glorifying these thugs, turning them into handsome pop stars indulging in designer violence, is quite sickening.

Apparently Charlie Kray, the twins' older brother, wa
s frequently on the set during the making of the film, so it's little wonder that there's a certain amount of whitewashing going on. Many famous incidents from the Krays' career are missing. There is no mention of their breaking one of their confederates out of prison, and then having him killed. There's no mention of their famous "friends in high places", who were reputed to be protecting the Krays from the police for much of the Sixties. And the police almost never feature as characters at all - the only time we see one is right at the start, when a bungling, ineffectual comedy cop, played by Blakey from On The Buses, comes to look for the Krays' draft-dodging father. We don't see the arrest, the trial, or the Krays in prison (although we do see them as old men attending their mother's funeral with heavy police escort). I was surprised they even left in the fact that Ronnie was gay, although he doesn't get fat like he did in real life (thus making Cornell's famous insult to him pretty meaningless).

And there are lots of characters missing, not least Charlie Kray. Charlie Kray was sentenced to ten years in prison for complicity in his brothers' crimes, and was part of their gang. But, apart from a few token appearances at the start, we don't see much of Charlie. George Cornell worked for the Krays' rivals, the better organised Richardson gang, but they aren't named as such in this film, they're called something completely different. And the Richardsons' notorious henchman, Frankie Fraser, doesn't feature at all. Most of the Krays' own gang aren't named, or given significant characterisation. You get the feeling that the film-makers weren't allowed to use a lot of the real names, whether for legal reasons or under duress. On the whole it just feels like there's too much information left out for this to be a well-rounded film of the Krays' career, and you have to wo
nder about the motives of those involved in producing such a film.

I'd definitely recommend giving this film a wide berth. There probably is a good film to be made of the Kray saga. This isn't it.

Summary: