The Krays tells the story of the notorious London East End gangsters Ronnie (Gary Kemp) & Reggie Kray (Martin Kemp) from their humble upbringing to the top of post-war London gangland with some seriously nasty antics. They ruled through fear, intimidation & sadistic brutally until they were convicted of murder & sentenced to life...

This English production was directed by Peter Medak & I have to confess I didn't think too much of it, what it comes down to is whether you can enjoy a film that lasts for two hours populated with seriously unlikable people. Personally I can't to any great degree. The script by Philip Ridley is rather slow going, it's half an hour before the grown up twins appear & even then the Krays criminal activity isn't actually given that much screen time or emphasis. This is a biopic that tries to get into the psyche's of the Krays, the fact that they were nothing more than thugs & mommies boys seems to be the overriding message here. I am not old enough to remember them first time around & I only know what I have read & been told but I was surprised to learn that Ronnie was gay & that he was the truly psychotic one. The Krays just isn't a very likable or enjoyable film, it's unrelentingly depressing with sadistic gangland violence, suicide, death & poverty stricken misery. Does that really sound like an enjoyable escapist film? I also feel large chunks of the Krays lives have been ignored, their trial & sentencing is one such omission as is their initial rise up the criminal underworld ladder.

Like other comments on the IMDb have mentioned I am uneasy with the Krays getting their own film & almost being glamorised as 'honourable' villains to look up to or aspire to. They were vicious scum who hurt, killed & intimidated a lot of people for their own selfish ends. I'm sorry but I don't really want to see a film where they come across as sympathetic or fair as it's not true, they were scumbag villains who seemingly took great pleasure in hurting people & enjoyed living off the dubious rewards. The line 'If people are afraid of you, you can do anything' sums up their mentality as callous self serving scum who should have hanged. One thing I noticed watching this is that it was sometimes difficult to tell the two twins apart since the Kemp brothers are identical & as I started to lose interest in the film it became more of a problem.

Technically the film is alright, it's not exactly brimming with style & director Medak keeps his camera fairly static in a standard point-and-shoot policy. Filmed on location out in London the period production design is strangely bland & very forgettable, then again I suppose that's how it looked back then. Those watching The Krays expecting bags of violence had better forget it, there's the infamous sword slash moment as Ronnie slices a guy's lips open, the same sword gets stuck through someones hand, there's some fights & little else. The acting is alright but I didn't think anyone was brilliant, I thought the Kemp twins (maybe better known as 80's pop band Spandau Ballet?) were actually quite wooden at times.

The Krays is a film based on true events (although how true it is is anyone's guess, I mean the people featured were hardly upstanding trustworthy pillars of the community were they?) & as such is a rather bland viewing experience. Large eras from the Krays life are ignored & overall I just couldn't enjoy it as a film or what it was trying to do.

The Kray twins were arrogant vicious bullying thugs who thought they were untouchable.Their criminal associates were arrogant vicious bullying thugs who thought they were untouchable.They pedalled protection" to shopkeepers,publicans,small businessmen and club owners who were unfortunate enough to have premises in what they considered was their manor.An inducement to pay was often offered in the form of a tyre iron inserted into the rectum which tended to concentrate the mind wonderfully.They and their cohorts strutted round the Vallance Road Triangle as if it was the mean streets of The Bronx. They fantasised about joining up with the Mafia,but the Mob considered the Twins to be Toytown Gangsters and the alliance never materialised. Their sphere of influence was proscribed by other equally violent London criminals,but within its limits they killed and killed again.They had that total absence of restraint that characterises the seriously flawed personality and strikes fear in everybody else.But their overweening arrogance was the cause of their downfall.Celebrating their acquittal at the Old Bailey on a charge of demanding money with menaces,they sent a bottle of champagne to a table in the restaurant where,by coincidence,a detective was having a rare night out with his wife.His name was Leonard Reed,known throughout the Met as "Nipper".Outraged by their behaviour he went to his boss's office the next morning and proposed the setting - up of a Task Force to bring down the Krays for good.Within 3 years the twins were starting 30 year sentences. Those are the facts,but they must never be allowed to get in the way of a good story so the Urban Myths began to circulate.Today unless you either lived or worked within their area of influence your only access to the twisted world of the Krays is via the bandwagon jumpers who have been milking their sordid fame for nearly forty years. Forget the stories of "Respect".To the Old Bill and to their fellow cons they were known as Gert and Daisy. The film version of their lives is mostly a nonsense.The use of the Kemp brothers can only be considered as a gimmick,and an unsuccessful one at that.They have all the menace of a couple of day - old chicks. Andrew Rigeley and George Michael would have been more convincing. Miss B.Whitelaw does her best with the cockney accent but it isn't as easy as she obviously thinks it is.If,as popular legend would have it,Mrs Kray totally dominated her sons,I cannot for the life of me understand how she didn't give them a good slap when they first went out thieving.Her generation were great believers in "Spare the rod and spoil the child".If she had,Jack the Hat,George Cornell and Frank Mitchell might all be alive now - and one or two others they kept a bit more quiet about.I must make special mention of Mr S.Berkoff who sneers and snarls away to his heart's content as the man who picked a bad time to pop into "The Blind Beggar" for a swift half. Mr T.Bell plays the twins' older brother Charlie whose wife once bravely provided an alibi for a rival gangster up on a murder charge.She stated that she was in bed with him at the time of the alleged offence - a revelation that can't have offered her husband too much comfort. Charlie in later life claimed he was a victim of the Kray legend,blaming it for his subsequent conviction and heavy dose of bird for drug trafficking. They were clearly what would now be referred to as a dysfunctional family and a team of Social Workers would fearfully follow their Burberry'd progress through ASBOs to the Old Bailey. But Reg and Ron in their slick Italian suits and with their showbiz "friends" who in fact hardly knew their names had grandiose dreams and they didn't include doing bird.Even the briefest study of the works of Robert Burns might have given the pause for thought.

"The Krays" is a film about two real-life twins who were sociopathic gangsters. Specializing in extortion and the like, they were definitely kindness-impaired! While it is a well-made film, I didn't like it--hence my summary. But I must admit that it was well-made and so at least for that I gave it the score of 6. However, this is not the sort of movie I usually watch (I am not a fan of modern gangster films) and the characters were thoroughly repellent throughout--making the film hard to care about and hard to like. Plus, aside from showing they are sensitive and can cry, what did I learn about the Krays? Well, they were violent and loved to kill people....big surprise, eh? Another complaint I had is that HUGE chunks of the film seemed to be missing. In the 1960s, they were fun-loving horrors--but then the film jumps to their mother's death in 1982 and then gives a printed epilogue saying that they are now both in prison!! I don't get this....why end the film like that?!