THE KRAYS: GANGSTERS BEHIND BARS

2021 | DIR: RICHARD JOHN TAYLOR | STARRING: STEVE WRAITH, CELIA WRAITH, DAVE COURTNEY, CHARLES BRONSON, MAUREEN FLANAGAN | REVIEW BY CHRIS THOMPSON 

For fans of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, the notorious Piranha Brothers (Doug and Dinsdale) and their penchant for being cruel but fair in their practice of nailing their rivals’ heads to the coffee table were an instant and memorable hit when they were introduced to the world in episode one of the comedy show’s second season (1970). Of course, the characters were thinly veiled parodies of the real-life 50’s and 60’s East End criminals; identical twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray, who were nowhere near as funny as the Python sketch. The mythology of their sociopathic, violent exploits that characterised their careers is well known but not necessarily understood, at least if you believe what Richard John Taylor’s documentary, The Krays: Gangsters Behind Bars has to say.

Centred around one long interview with occasional actor, YouTuber, podcaster and number one fan of Newcastle United, Steve Wraith, the doco offers a kind of side-view of the Krays that tempers the more commonly told and brutal story with an insider’s eye to the more human side of their lives. Revealing that they loved their mum, that they wouldn’t stand for or commit profanity in the presence of women and that they were more than willing to lend their notoriety to charity events for underprivileged children might sound like I’m still talking about the Pythons’ take on the twins, but that’s the story Steve Wraith has to tell, and it’s backed up by several other figures from their life and times.

As a high school kid struggling in English, Steve Wraith’s teacher allowed him to choose a book that appealed to him, rather than one from the curriculum. He chose a book on the Kray Brothers and that set him on a path that eventually resulted in a friendship with both Reggie and Ronnie, already incarcerated in separate prisons – first meeting Reggie in Maidstone Prison and then Ronnie in Broadmoor Prison Hospital where he was classified as insane. Later Steve also befriended the third brother, Charlie who was a mover and shaker on the outside (but also ended up in prison sometime later). As Steve unfolds his tale of many years of friendship with the Krays – not always amicable - we meet other figures who corroborate and extend the story he tells. These are geezers who often feel like they could be from the cast of an early Guy Ritchie film (although, it’s more likely that they’re the ones who gave Ritchie the idea). There’s also Maureen Flanagan, former page-three girl, once touted as the most photographed model in Britain (and, curiously, who made many BBC TV comedy appearances including Monty Python!). Now eighty, Flanagan’s entre to the Kray’s world was as the twin’s mother Violet’s hairdresser. She soon became close to all three boys and it’s her recollections that portray them as gentlemen with a kinder side to the cruelty and violence they are mostly defined by.

The most entertaining talking head, though, is former Kray’s enforcer and close confident, Dave Courtney who with his bling and big cigar looks like a Soprano’s henchman. He’s the one who, when Ronnie died in 1995, stood vigil in the funeral home to make sure that rivals with long held grudges didn’t desecrate the body. Courtney doesn’t mince words and it’s his perspective that puts forward the idea that the Krays were of their time – a time before the internet and mobile phones and ubiquitous surveillance. He’s pretty clear that crims like them wouldn’t survive for five minutes in the contemporary world. As he says, with the utmost affection, they were just a couple of dickheads.

The strong message that comes through from all these testimonials is, essentially, that crime doesn’t pay; that your infamous reputation and celebrity might live on, but it’s at the cost of living your life. These are voices of the Kray’s friends and acquaintances, hard men who’ve been inside or are still, inside. Perhaps the most poignant of these is the voice that begins and ends the documentary – Charles Bronson, supposedly Britain’s most violent and most notorious criminal (who was memorably played by Tom Hardy in Nicholas Winding Refn’s 2009 film of Bronson’s life). His appearance (plastered all over the promotional material as a key selling point) is audio only, but his soft-spoken memories of the Krays portray, if true, sincere friendship between men who are rarely thought of as being friendly.

Visually, this doco is unremarkable. It’s mostly static talking heads with many ‘filler’ images used more than once with gives the film a repetitive feel. There’s some good imagery of all three of the Kray boys but the film would benefit from a wider variety of archival footage. There is also a sense that some of the talking heads could be more tightly edited to build a stronger overall dynamic. Nevertheless, there is much to recommend this film which, in the end, succeeds off the back of those colourful and compelling characters who were part of the Kray’s world and lived to tell the tales. 
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