The Rise of the Krays

This is another attempt at the story of the Kray twins who terrorised London's East End starting in the early 1960s. UK resident will know of the Kray twins as they had quite a reputation. Their portrayal in this movie is laughable. They come across as misunderstood, well meaning brats which they certainly weren't. As far as pure entertainment goes the movie is a first class clanger. The story of the Krays has been done before and was a considerably better effort than this latest version. Obviously made on a tight budget and full of historical inaccuracies, it is dull and at most times, embarrassing and painful to watch. I humbly suggest that you do yourself a huge favour, steer clear of this dud and wait for the release of "Legend" with Tom Hardy which I imagine will be infinitely better.

Simon Cotton and Kevin Leslie star as the twin brothers who were leading gangsters in 1960s London. Filmed simultaneously with its sequel, THE FALL OF THE KRAYS, it purports to offer their lives from their initial move to take over a bar, through their increasing political influence through the election of Harold Wilson.

Although Ronnie's homosexuality is not mentioned -- despite its featuring in other versions -- there is the occasionally almost orgasmic release as Kevin Leslie pulls out a cavalry saber to rip apart some bloke who has offended him. Is this some lingering reticence, or will it be saved for the sequel? There's certainly no shyness about showing young women's breasts in the sequence covering the Profumo Affair. My conclusion is that this was intended as pornography, soft enough to manage an R rating in the US and an 18 in the UK.

This film is terrible. Where to start? Poor acting, no idea where they got the guy who played Reggie from but I've seen more character in a wooden spoon. No proper research was clearly done into the Krays which makes the film hard to watch and cringe worthy in parts. The fact that the "twins" looked and acted a million miles apart pretty much sums it up. It's offensive that this film was even produced under the name of the Krays and I agree with other users that the logic behind the film was simply to milk the subject for all it's worth. Best advice would be to save your time and money and either watch Legend or read one of John Pearson's novels on the Krays, both of which at least do the subject some justice.

This is an absolutely poor lose "remake" of the The Krays. Poorly filmed, awful scripting and a total mish-mash of babble. Not only that it would appear that whole budget was spent on fake blood that showed up quite a bit in the film. Indeed, it seems that the whole film just contained mindless violence for the sake of violence as it cheapish to produce on film.

Add to this the appalling locations and errors in sets e.g. "plastic double glazed windows" and modern cars it just make it more unbearable to watch. I seemed to of missed key points in their history due to sleep apnea! I really isn't worth the watch or the pain. At times in the film I wished they would of plucked my eyes out to save me the torture!

This is a good example of when the writer and director get together and try to be artsy. Most of the dialog isn't bad, and most of the acting is at least par. But man they have these scenes, slow mo, and in "space" that just sink this movie. It's like they were looking for 40 minutes of filler to extend this crap into some series instead of just telling the story. They weren't even montage worth scenes, it's like they watched pulp fiction and tried to implement it but failed full out. They took up such a large portion of this first part that it was almost unwatchable. The story of the Krays has so much potential, however you won't see that here! It's simply not scripted well enough to make the story of two kick ass twin brother gangsters good. With so much source material it's a sad statement that they couldn't get it right. You can not simply depict people as crazy by having slow mo space screens with them holding a gun. What ever this director was thinking when he shot this, or the write was thinking when they wrote it just makes my head hurt. This movie is exhibit A on what not to do when writing a movie.