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Tom Hardy's solid performance as legendary British gangster Reggie Kray goes to waste in the crime drama "Legend" because of the showy, mannered portrayal of his co-star, Tom Hardy.

The actor plays Reggie and his twin brother, Ron Kray, as writer-director Brian Helgeland ("42," "A Knight's Tale") traces the brothers' rise to criminal prominence in 1960s London, with Reggie as the debonair businessman trying to keep Ron, a certified paranoid-schizophrenic, in line.

Helgeland, adapting John Pearson's exposé "The Profession of Violence," details how the Krays conquered the competing London gangsters, got the backing of American mobster Meyer Lansky (through a representative played by Chazz Palminteri) and built up an empire of clubs, casinos and extortion. The fulcrum, and in Helgeland's telling the narrator, is Reggie's young girlfriend, Frances Shea (Emily Browning), who urged Reggie to go legit — but found his love of the gangster life, and Ron's pull, too strong.

Helgeland runs his cast through the usual gangster clichés of opulent living punctuated by bloody violence on an endless loop. Hardy brings a sharp romanticism to Reggie, but his portrayal of the unhinged Ron falls back on a narrow array of actorish tics.

'Legend'

Opens Wednesday, Nov. 25, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas; rated R for strong violence, language throughout, some sexual and drug material; 131 minutes.