`The Krays' A Gangster Film With A Mythic Dimension

XXX 1/2 ``The Krays,'' with Billie Whitelaw, Gary Kemp, Martin Kemp, Tom Bell. Directed by Peter Medak, from a script by Philip Ridley. Metro, Grand Cinemas Alderwood, Factoria, SeaTac, Renton Village, Aurora Cinema. ``R'' - Restricted due to nudity, graphic violence, strong language.

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Like Martin Scorsese's ``GoodFellas,'' ``The Krays'' is a gangster movie with a difference.

Both films are based on real-life characters. But where ``GoodFellas'' shocks with its cheerful, punchy nihilism, ``The Krays'' catches viewers off guard with the mythic dimension it brings to its tale of telepathic twins whose mother thinks they can do no wrong.

Ronald and Reginald Kray grew up during the London Blitz and became the underworld czars of London's East End in the 1950s and 1960s. Rather than using a traditional documentary approach in bringing their story to the screen, director Peter Medak (``The Ruling Class'') employs an edgy, heightened lyricism. He has the help of Philip Ridley's incisive poetic script, Michael Kamen's eerie skittering synthesizer score, Alex Thomson's supple camerawork and Martin Walsh's quicksilver editing.

The film is far from an arid exercise in technique, however. Every sound trick, every close-up, every shadowy movement is there to distill the action to its essence and to portray a sealed-off but larger-than-life world. Grim row houses, dinky gardens and cramped sitting rooms are made mysteriously expansive by the all-powerful presence of the twins' mother, Violet (Billie Whitelaw).

It's Violet who loves them ``more than anything; more than all the cakes, more than all the jewelry, more than all the chocolate.'' And it's Violet who, when they're sleeping in the makeshift bomb shelters of the London Underground during the Blitz, glances at the skies and says, ``No one's going to hurt you - not with me around. They wouldn't dare. They wouldn't bloody well dare.''

Despite - or perhaps because of - Violet's fierce protectiveness, Ron (Gary Kemp) and Reg (Martin Kemp) grow up to feel there's nothing they can't do. Discovering that ``glamour is fear,'' they rule their turf with sadistic glee and dapper style. At first they command the respect of their fellow hoodlums. But when respect turns to contempt, their empire of swank nightclubs and sinister protection rackets starts to unravel.

Ronald's taste for reptiles and boys earns him the loathing of homophobic street thug George Cornell (Steven Berkoff). Reg's efficiency on the job is hampered by the misery of his young wife Frances (Kate Hardie, in a bravura scraping-the-walls performance). The twins are also threatened by the drunken, loose-lipped ramblings of Jack ``The Hat'' McVitie (Tom Bell). It's just a matter of time before the violence they rely on backfires on them.

These intrigues matter only insofar as they ricochet off - or are undermined by - the volatile family psyche. It's the changing family picture that is the backbone of the film. And it's the women's contempt for their men (who are layabouts, drunkards and losers) that propels the twins toward flashy, unscrupulous success.

Whitelaw is a grim dynamo. As Violet, she blends a stoic ferocity with an almost comically frenzied domesticity. Violet is convinced she's only doing what any mother would do, as she lavishes unquestioning adoration on her boys.

The Kemp brothers (of Spandau Ballet) are uncannily good as Violet's ``little monsters,'' and there's not a false note among the supporting cast. Of special note are Jimmy Jewel as Cannonball Lee, the twins' ex-boxer/vaudevillian grandfather, and Vernon Dobtcheff as an elementary school teacher in love with the ``disease'' of language who asks the twins for a ``wonderful'' word. (``Crocodile,'' they answer in unison.)

If ``The Krays'' has a fault, it's in its overstated linking of the twins' violence with the violence of the Blitz. This comes in the final moments of the film, however, and doesn't disturb the heart of it: Violet's passion for her boys and the vicarious pleasure she gets from their success.

``I don't think it's possible to love someone too much,'' she comments to Ron on Reg and Frances' marriage, ``but I think you can love them in the wrong way.''

In lines like these, which Violet never dreams might apply to herself, the film enters the realm of tragedy. Violet's blindness is both the key to her own survival and the cause of her sons' downfall.

``The Krays'' doesn't approve of the terrors its protagonists inflict on those weaker than themselves. But it is in awe of the way family passions play themselves out.

Medak and Ridley have taken the stuff of tabloid headlines and alchemized it into cinematic gold.