Sexy Beast (2000)

Dir Jonathan Glazer

Written by Louis Mellis & David Scinto

Ray Winstone, Ben Kingsley, Ian McShane, Amanda Redman, James Fox, Cavan Kendall, Julianne White, Alvaro Monje.

Former London mob safe cracker Gal (Winstone), has moved to Spain to retire. One of his former allies, the brutal gangster Don Logan (Kingsley) has come to ask him for one last job. The job is to break into a safe for the Don, Terry Bass (McShane), but Gal doesn’t want to do it. Can Don talk him into it.

The debut direction from Glazer, does feel a little clunky and inexperienced. There were some moments that were done a little poorly – such as camera shakes during car rides, echoing during shouting scenes in the kitchen, and the diegetic sound while some characters are eating. I also felt like Glazer was trying to emulate some more well known directors like Guy Ritchie or Quentin Tarantino.

Performances were solid, with the MVP going to Kingsley as the gangster Don. His performance was almost too aggressive at times, and felt a little on the nose. This was likely the result of a little silly screenplay with too many uses of the ‘c’ and ‘f’ word – which I felt was only really used to excess to be provocative. The blend of extreme language and the almost overly ‘loving’ of some of the male characters to the female characters seemed out of place too. McShane, who plays the mob boss, didn’t really feel overly threatening to me either.

The plot is something that has been done countless times, and this one is a little slow – and dialogue heavy. A lot of it is where Don is trying to be intimidating to Gal and his friends, but it comes across a little cartoonish. The main ‘action’ isn’t until the last 30 minutes of the film and is only really a small part of the whole film. It’s not until this occurs until there is any real resemblance of a musical score too.

I went into this hoping for something amazing, but instead I honestly felt it was underwhelming. There were too many moments that I didn’t enjoy, that were clearly a product of its time – which is frightening to think of as a movie made in a year beginning in 2. Even at 86m it felt like it dragged.