Flak Magazine: Review of Sexy Beast, 7-11-01

From the shear perfection of Sexy Beast's opening scene — which juxtaposes the doughy, middle-aged, good-life-livin' Gal Dove (Ray Winstone) with the raunchy, youthful sexuality of the Stranglers' new wave classic "Peaches" — it's clear director Jonathan Glazer knows how to put images to music.

This should come as little surprise, given Glazer's success at directing videos for Radiohead ("Karma Police") and U.N.K.L.E. ("Rabbit in Your Headlights"), among others. Where Sexy Beast — Glazer's debut feature — succeeds, however, is in its director's ability to create a London gangster dramedy from a totally different school than the latest from Guy Ritchie or his less-talented followers.

Where Ritchie and Co. hang their hats on civilians who blunder their ways into the underworld, Sexy Beast is the tale of the one who thought he got away. Ex-East Ender Gal, whose bronzed, beefy frame easily fills the majority of the film's opening scene, was more than likely in his high-living, big-spending, ladykilling prime back when "Peaches" hit the charts in 1977.

Now, however, Gal's living it up on Spain's Iberian Peninsula, working on little other than his golden brown skin, his fantastic marriage to ex-porn star DeeDee (Amanda Redman) and his chummy rapport with fellow retirees Aitch and Jackie. Everything seems so laid back, in fact, that when a giant boulder comes careening into the frame, narrowly missing Gal before ending up at the bottom of his swimming pool, he and the audience shrug it off. "Peaches" cuts out for only a moment.

All this changes when Jackie (Julianne White) comes to dinner and announces that Don Logan called looking for Gal. Suddenly, it's as if 10 boulders had careened down the mountain, smashing Gal's home, car and way of life. An eerie silence fills the frame as Aitch, Jackie and DeeDee clam up and Glazer subtly phases out all the background noise before homing in on Gal, who changes the subject by complimenting the restaurant.

Don's about to come to town to convince Gal to come back to London for one last job.

It's the jumping off point for a thousand run-of-the-mill gangster movies: the ex-con convinced by a buddy to get back into the business for one last get-rich-quick go-round.

Looking like a freeze-dried pit bull snapped back to life, Don (Ben Kingsley) is no buddy. And the blissfully retired Gal is no easy sell.

It doesn't take Glazer's audience long to find out why everyone's so afraid of Don. Spewing bile, profanity and invective like Sean Connery's hopped-up, speed-freak, East-London-Bizarro counterpart, Kingsley gives a performance so amped up, so over-the-top, he's unrecognizable as the man who played Gandhi or starred with Liam Neeson in Schindler's List. It's the kind of role — so different from anything else the actor is done — that defines a brilliant career. Glazer, defying his directorial inexperience, wisely backs off, letting Kingsley and the low-key Winstone ply their trade more than the whiz-bang gimmickry of the typical new-wave British crime flick would allow.

The two men butt heads so fiercely over Gal's future they pretty much literally butt heads. Don pees on Gal and DeeDee's carpet. He attacks them while they're sleeping. He terrorizes Aitch and Jackie. Punches are thrown, all by Don. Gal whimpers a lot, but he's not about to give up the good life and alienate his wife. Don seemingly resigns himself to failure and boards a plane, only to get thrown off for smoking, an occurrence that sends the enraged Don back to Gal's for a reckoning that makes this last job unrefusable.

Next thing we know, Gal's in London — sans Don — where he uses his expertise as a diver to help loot an ultra-secure vault full of safe deposit boxes. To explain how all this works — or why Don fails to accompany Gal back from Spain — is to steal half of Sexy Beast's darkly surreal formula.

The script, written by newbies Louis Mellis and David Scinto, is first-rate, filled with enough Cockney wit and comic timing to make 100 Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels knockoffs. And it's obvious from the get-go that Glazer respects the script. In the opening scene, the underwater robbery and some tripped-out fantasy sequences, the movie has some of the look-at-me showmanship audiences have come to expect from rookie filmmakers. But it's all secondary to the story, which is why Sexy Beast succeeds where similarly themed movies fail.

In a world where directors' egos are as large as soccer stadiums and good actors are frequently paired with less-than-stellar material, it's refreshing to see a rookie so capable of putting it all together, of making a slick, one-of-a-kind crime flick sure to be big in America at a time when the road to the cutting room is paved with wannabes.

— Eric Wittmershaus (ericw at flakmag dot com)