Sexy Beast

Jonathan Glazier, UK, 2000, 91 minutes

“FAN DABI – DOBI – TASTIC!” mutters Gary (Ray Winston), baking in the Spanish mid-day sun - a British ex –con, who has served his time and now resigned to peaceful retirement in the Costa Del Crime, with ex porn star wife Amanda Redman.

However one realises this domestic idyll is not going to continue when a giant boulder comes plummeting down the hillside (Raiders of the Lost Ark style) into Gary’s pool. The Utopia smashed, worse things are to come for Gary, with a phone call from old gang leader Don Logan, played by Ben Kingsley. Any serenity Kingsley used for his Ghandhi role has been used up, and he plays an unhinged psychotic on a par with Dennis Hopper’s Frank Booth – bringing danger, chaos and unease where he goes.

Glazer makes a nod to Takeshi Kitano’s style of balancing this forboding with surreal and almost slapstick comedic moments

“What’s that?”

“A goat!”

Worth watching alone, to see TVs Lovejoy (Ian McShane playing Teddy) being rooted by James Fox in an orgy scene. The action then switches to England for one last job where the net and tension around Gary’s Sexy Beast gets ever tighter, bringing a sense of tension universally lacking in the rest of the British Modern Gangster genre. As Glazer’s first feature, things look very promising for this excellent British director.

Review by Stephen Brennan
Written for EUFS Programme Spring 2002