Post-war East End London. Ronnie and Reggie Kray are school-ground bullies brought up by a domineering mother and two devoted aunts. National Service and spells in prison expose the brutality that helps establish the twin brothers as the kings of 1960s gangland London. Philip Ridley's original, uncut screenplay, almost as notorious as its subject matter, is a stylized meditation on maternal love, childhood, violence, and homoeroticism and takes its place as one of the masterpieces of contemporary British cinema.Winner of the 1990 Evening Standard Film Award for Best film."Ridley ... reveals himself most welcomely as a genuinely innovative filmmaker, untrammelled by conventions and with an individualistic imagination firing on all cylinders."?I>The Evening Standard