An unconventional and stylish cult British gangster film that swings effortlessly from funny to nightmarish, with an acclaimed villainous turn from Ben Kingsley.
Retired criminal Gary “Gal” Dove (Ray Winstone) may not be much of a sexy beast as he lies oiled in the sun in his ridiculous yellow briefs, plump from easy life and going lobster-red, but few would dispute that he’s one happy man. Life is sweet in Spain, lounging by the pool at a private villa with Gal’s beloved wife DeeDee, a former porn star, and a couple of close friends. Even an ominous accident – a giant boulder that rolls down the hill and crashes into the pool, cracking the tiles and just missing Gal by inches – cannot dent his sheer contentment.
Gal’s Spanish idyll is ruined by the arrival of Don Logan (Ben Kingsley), an old associate hellbent on recruiting Gal for a heist job on behalf of Teddy Bass (Ian McShane), a crime lord back in London. You know from the way Gal and his friends react to Logan’s name that he’s no ordinary messenger, and that it will take every ounce of Gal’s courage to refuse the offer. Logan is a frightening psychopath, a mad dog and a psychological bully who gets increasingly aggressive as he tries to force Gal into accepting.
The “one last job” trope is as old as the crime genre itself, but Sexy Beast breaks the mould by treating the heist almost as an afterthought in the third act, though when the time comes the bank robbery scene is enormously entertaining and well-staged. The true tension comes from the increasingly dangerous impasse between Gal and Logan, with Ben Kingsley clearly relishing a chance to play against the type. The impact of this movie is in large part thanks to the improbable sight of Gandhi Oscar-winner spitting out obscenities like a psychotic drill sergeant, and instilling fear with his twitchy way of speaking and sociopathic cunning.
Though I was fully impressed with Kingsley’s bravura performance, a testament to his versatility as an actor, I found Logan himself something of a one-note character. To my surprise, Ian McShane as ice-cold big boss Teddy actually ended up stealing the entire movie in the last stretch. For all his nastiness and brutality, Logan is still very much an underling, but Teddy with his quiet menace and piercing eyes that drill down to the bottom of your soul feels like a bigger, scarier animal in the underworld food chain. Ray Winstone as Gal is by design nowhere near as flashy, but he gives Gal a sympathetic edge you’d want in a protagonist.
I found out later that Sexy Beast was the directorial debut of Jonathan Glazer, who later made the deeply strange and unsettling Under the Skin with Scarlett Johansson. This movie is nowhere near as experimental and cryptic, but it has the same audacity and eye for striking visual imagery, with the surreal touches that you wouldn’t normally expect in your average British crime thriller.
I feel weird complaining about the movie’s brisk running time when my gripe with the more recent releases tends to be the opposite, but though Sexy Beast is sharp and funny, it felt maybe a tad too lean; a bit like going to a top-notch restaurant with excellent food and still feeling a tiny bit hungry after a three-course meal. Still, Glazer’s film is unlike any other gangster flick I’ve ever seen, and very much a special and unique beast.
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