After inserting Tom Hardy into our dreams in Inception, throwing him at Batman in The Dark Knight Rises, taking him for a real-time road trip in Locke, and resurrecting a decades-old franchise for him with Mad Max: Fury Road, it seemed, for a time, Hollywood had run out of ideas to up our Hardy quotient.
Then Legend was announced, feeding our perilously escalating Hardy-hunger levels with a simple plan: twin Hardys. Based on the true-crime story of the Kray brothers, Hardy plays both Ronald and Reginald, a pair of gangsters who defined organized crime in London’s East End during the ’50s and ’60s. Though the brothers each cut a suave figure in their black suits, we quickly learn that not all Hardys are the same. Reggie is a smooth-talking planner, while Ron is a “violent, paranoid schizophrenic.” Reggie likes to curl up with the ladies, but Ron isn’t bashful about preferring the company of men (Italian boys, specifically). And both seem ready to break the rules and run London’s criminal underground by making friends with the American mafia.
Because this is a movie about identical twins with a short fuse, it’s only a matter of time before the Krays direct their violence at each other. All hell subsequently breaks lose, as do all Hardys. If seeing a pair of Winklevossed-Tom Hardys slapping each other across the face doesn’t alleviate your Hardy-withdrawal symptoms, you’ll just have to wait for the all-Hardy reboot of The Avengers.
Prepare to Hardy all the time when Legend hits theaters on October 2.