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Brian Helgeland

Legend – Brian Helgeland (2018)

  • crime

This film reminds quite a bit of the Peaky Blinders series, mostly in the first half.

In the 1960’ies London, of which some stages remind of Peaky’s Birmingham, two brothers virtually run the city. They have both legal and illegal business, are ruthless towards the opposite and try to work themselves towards common businessmen.

That is to say, one of the half of the twins Kray does, the other prefers to be a gangster. While visually alike, the Krays are each others opposites character-wise and this starts to clash when the ideas start to run in opposing directions.

As I said, the first half of the film reminds of Peaky Blinders. In a gritty city wealthy gangsters live their luxurious lives. After a while the film moves more towards a typical mafia film, but it is still fairly well done.

Payback * Brian Helgeland (1999)

  • action

Seriously, it is purely coincidental that this is again a Mel Gibson film. I did not rent the previous one because of Gibson and “Payback” I got from a friend who dropped the title of this film every time I mentioned the genre of the action film. Inspite of my friend’s raving words about the film, I did not find it very good. The story is rather thin and the film is nowhere surprising. Gibson plays a man who was double crossed during a robbery and later he goes out to get his share. Porter is both violent and masochistic, perhaps these elements where strong in 1999, but in 2012 it no longer adds much to see a guy allowing his toes to be hammered in order to get even. “Payback” is perhaps somewhat of a classic and it certainly is not boring, there is some humour in it and the acting is good, but I did not find it very convincing.

A Knight’s Tale * Brian Helgeland * 2001

Another one that I saw flying. I haven’t seen this movie play in any cinema in Seattle, but neither does it seem to be shown in Europe. But you don’t miss much anyway. Just a movie about knights in general and lance-fights in particular. Nothing special.