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| Ben Kingsley and Ray Winstone in Sexy Beast |
As paunchy, suntanned Gal Dove, a retired safecracker played by Ray Winstone, stands beside the swimming pool of his Spanish villa, a huge boulder comes crashing down the hillside behind him. But just as it seems about to flatten him, it takes a bounce and sails over his head to land in the pool. The incident is metaphorical for what's about to occur to Gal with the arrival of deranged motormouth Don Logan, played by Ben Kingsley in an Oscar-nominated performance. Don has been dispatched by crime boss Teddy Bass (Ian McShane) to persuade Gal to participate in an elaborate heist back in London. Don is as deadly as the boulder, and like it, he too winds up in the pool, but not before doing a good deal of damage. Kingsley's hilariously sinister performance as the unhinged mobster is the most celebrated thing about Sexy Beast, but this decidedly eccentric spin on a film noir plot is also an invigorating reworking of the conventional heist movie. The heist itself, which involves breaking into an impregnable vault underwater, would have been the center of an ordinary movie, but here it's intercut with a flashback to what happened in the confrontation of Don with Gal and his wife, Deedee (Amanda Redman). Jonathan Glazer's work directing TV commercials and music videos is reflected in the film's occasional hyperactivity and elements of the surreal and bizarre, but he's also able to sustain moments of tension before and between eruptions of violent action.
