Sexy Beast, 2000.
Directed by Jonathan Glazer.
Starring Ray Winstone, Ben Kingsley, Amanda Redman, Ian McShane, Cavan Kendall, James Fox, and Julianne White.
SYNOPSIS:
Brutal gangster Don Logan recruits retired safecracker Gal for one last job, but it goes badly for both of them.
British gangster movies tend to fall into one of two categories, those being the very silly (but fun) ones that make their lead characters into indestructible killing machines – see Rise of the Footsoldier, its many sequels and anything starring Craig Fairbrass or Danny Dyer – and then there are the ‘serious’ ones, the ones with scripts you could quote verbatim, stories you remember and usually starring home-grown acting royalty. Jonathan Glazer’s 2000 hit Sexy Beast definitely falls into the latter category.
Ray Winstone plays Gary ‘Gal’ Dove, a retired safecracker living off the rewards of his past life in his Spanish villa with his wife DeeDee (Amanda Redman), and with his friends Aitch (Cavan Kendall) and his wife Jackie (Julianne White) living close by. Apart from a giant boulder appearing in his swimming pool, everything is going good for Gal but that peace is shattered when Jackie announces the impending arrival of Don Logan (Ben Kingsley), a former criminal associate of Gal’s and not a very nice man.
Ruthless gangster Teddy Bass (Ian McShane) is putting a job together in London and needs men qualified enough to break into the vault of a London bank, and so he sends Logan to Spain to put the offer to Gal for ‘one last job’. However, Gal is firmly retired and Don Logan is not a man you say no to, and so begins a battle of wills.
A dark comedy mixed with some old-fashioned heist movie plot points, Sexy Beast was very refreshing when it first came out, following as it did in the blazing trail of successful British movies like Trainspotting and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (although it probably has more in common with 1971s Get Carter than anything else), but with a script that sparkled and with dialogue delivered by actors who were clearly excited by what they were having to get across. With most crime movies it is the heist itself that is the highlight, the climax that the rest of the movie sets up, but in Sexy Beast the robbery is almost perfunctory, included because Gal has to have his arc, but it doesn’t hold any surprises or create a sense of excitement. In fact, you could almost cut it out.
That is because this movie is really a battle of wills against an unstoppable force and an immovable object, those being Don Logan and Gary Dove, respectively. Winstone is perfect as Gal, a tough man but someone who has let himself go in his retirement, baking himself in the Spanish sun and eating in fancy restaurants with DeeDee, whom he adores, and although we know Gal has been a bad boy in his past he is very much the protagonist of the story and we have to side with him, something which is very easy to do thanks to Winstone’s puppy dog eyes and put-upon facial expressions.
But it is Ben Kingsley as Don Logan who brings out those emotions in Gal, and Kingsley is nothing short of brilliant as the psychopathic gangster who is more terrifying psyching himself up in a bathroom mirror before exploding than any movie slasher you care to mention. Ben Kingsley is not a big man but the way he moves as Don is almost robotic – even military – in nature, giving him stature and making him intimidating before he’s even said anything, and when he does speak every other word is an expletive but is essential to making Don the force of nature that he is. Kingsley’s very nuanced and intelligent performance is the key to making the movie work – the Shakespearean actor himself says he thought the script was ‘poetic’ in the special features – and, interestingly, Ray Winstone was originally considered for the role of Don, which would have made him a more physical threat, but you wouldn’t have gotten the intensity and black humour that Kingsley brings.
Once the movie moves to London the timeline starts to jump around a bit, filling in details about Don’s visit we don’t see in the linear narrative, and that is when we get to meet Teddy Bass, who is just as intimidating as Don Logan but in a very different way and Ian McShane is clearly relishing playing him. Maybe it is because you don’t often star in a British gangster movie with Ray Winstone and get to unnerve him, but Teddy is a complex character and McShane plays him with a calm unpleasantness that isn’t as forceful as Don Logan, but is just as frightening. It is a shame he isn’t in the movie more, but when he is you cannot take your eyes off him.
As this is a Second Sight release, the movie comes housed in a rigid slipcase featuring new artwork, art cards and a 160-page book, and for special features there new interviews with Ray Winstone, Ben Kingsley, Ian McShane, editor Sam Sneade and producer Jeremy Thomas, all of which are worth watching to see how enthusiastic everyone working on the film was/is about it. There are also video essays, an audio commentary by critic John Bleasdale and archive behind-the-scenes material, and although Sexy Beast is not an effects-heavy visual feast the new Jonathan Glazer-approved restoration gives it a pleasing polish, so much so that you can almost feel the heat coming off the screen in the Spanish scenes, and when we visit rainy London in the final act the gloom is equally tangible.
So, 26 years on and Sexy Beast is still a powerhouse of not only British gangster movies but British cinema in general. Ray Winstone and Ben Kingsley were never better than they were here, and with solid support from Ian McShane, Amanda Redman et al the movie is never anything less than hugely enjoyable. Smart, economical filmmaking with a witty script delivered by actors on their A-game sounds a bit simplistic when describing Sexy Beast but that really is what it comes down to, and as far as benchmark crime movies go this one is still the daddy.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
