Sexy Beast

Rating:
Summary: Brutal and Nerve Wracking...And That's Just Kingsley
Review: This is a tough, hard movie about a retired safe cracker who is recruited for one last job. It also is funny and uncomfortable in equal measure, with excellent performances by Ray Winstone as the cracksman and Ian McShane as the man behind the job. Most of all, it has a mesmerizing and powerful performance by Ben Kingsley as Don Logan, all barely bottled resentment and anger as the muscle sent to recruit the Winstone character for the job.

Gal Dove (Winstone) has retired from crime and now lives in a villa on the coast of Spain with his wife, who has also retired, in her case from the porn business. They're easy going working class people who just want to bake in the sun and swim in their pool. One morning while Gal is sunning himself, listening to music, a huge boulder shakes loose from the hill above him and comes rolling down toward him. He doesn't see it and doesn't hear it. It barely misses his head and crashes into the pool.

A little later he learns that Teddy Bass (McShane) is sending Logan from London with an offer to buy into one last safe-cracking caper. Logan is more dangerous and lethal than the boulder would ever be. Logan sees everything as a possible affront or a deliberate insult. He's got half a screw loose. He can work himself into a rage in an instant. Just having a drink with him is nerve wracking. When Gal declines the offer, Logan's temperature rapidly starts going up. At one point, late at night while Gal and his wife are sound asleep, Logan wakes up to take a leak in his bathroom. He stands in front of the toilet, starts urinating and quickly talks himself into a rage. He deliberately moves so that he's peeing onto the floor. Then he charges into Gal's bedroom, wakes them up and is almost incoherent with what he seees as the insult of being turned down. It's sort of funny, but frightening. Kingsley gives one of the performances of his life. He is screwed so tight anything can set him off. His Don Logan is muscular, staring, almost rigid at times.

Gal quickly sees that he must join the gang in London or there is no predicting what Logan would do to him...or to his wife and their two friends. The rest of the movie is basically the underwater break-in from a pool in a turkish bath to the vaults of the next door bank. Logan is dealt with satisfyingly, but only after it looks like he will kill a young pool boy at Gal's villa. Gal gets back to Spain by the skin of his teeth, because Bass may suspect what happened to Logan but he really doesn't care.

Ray Winstone does a great job as the retired safe cracker. All he wants is peace and quiet and to enjoy the fruits of his labor with his wife and his friends. He's just a working class guy who does what he must, but who is a little shrewder than many would give him credit for. Ian McShane, on the other hand, does just as good a job, but his character is absolutely ruthless. He can be charming, with a smile that seems genuine. But the eyes are dead. You wouldn't want to cross him. He could turn Tony Soprano into hash.

This is a satisfyingly brutal, funny and ironic movie. The DVD transfer is first rate.

Rating:
Summary: Ben Kingsley is NOT SEXY!
Review: In the ugly tradition of The Neverending Story and Funny Girl, the title to this film is totally misleading! I bought it, watched it and WAS NOT aroused even once! Not even once!

I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, this might be one of the least sexy movies I have ever seen, and that includes other Ben Kingsley films like The House of Sand and Fog - did anyone else catch the "love" scene with him and his on-screen wife in that movie? If I hadn't already thrown up before the film, I would have during it!

Ray Winstone isn't exactly easy on the eyes either. I'm going to start sticking (with) women!

Rating:
Summary: "You're just going to have to turn this opportunity YES!!"
Review: Ben Kingsley is the ultimate chameleon, I mean this is the guy who won an Academy Award for Gandhi, the ultimate pacifist. Don Logan is the antithesis of the Mahatma in every way. Kingsley's character is as vicious and unrelenting as any character I can recall. Sexy Beast centers around a "retired" thief (Ray Winstone) who is "asked" out of retirement to do one last job by his old boss Don Logan (Kingsley). The majority of the running time of the film consists of Kingsley badgering, harrassing and degrading Winstone into doing the job. Kingsley's English Cockney accent is so spot on and acerbic it's as if he's spitting venom. This film has some of the best one liners to come along in some time, all from Kingsley of course, such as:

Gal: I'm happy here, Don.
Don: I won't let you be happy, why should I?

OR

Don: You skin looks like leather...like crocodile, big fat crocodile.

OR

Passenger on airplane: Why don't you put out the cigarette?
Don: I'll put it out, provided your prepared to let me put it out on your eyeball.

AND, OF COURSE

Gal: "I'm sorry, I'm just going to have to turn this opportunity down Don."
Don: "No, your just going to have to turn this opportunity YES!!"

Ian McShane rounds out this fantastic cast playing Teddy Bass, one of the most feared gangsters in all of England. McShane's deadpan glares are as scary as they come and he does a fantastic job as always. Overall, this is one of the best films I've seen in the past ten years. This may also be one of the most overlooked/underrated films of the past decade. Sexy Beast is an absolute must-own simply for Kingsley's chilling performance, don't think about it...BUY THIS! Highest Recommendation.

Rating:
Summary: The Man in me will do Nearly Any Task
Review: Gary "Gal" Dove has found bliss in retirement; Nirvana in the sun-drenched blistering heat of the Costa Del Sol, Spain.

His hillside villa is a billion miles away from his old life: safe-cracker and thug in gloomy old England. Within seconds of landing into the arid, teeming battleground of "Sexy Beast", we see Gal Dove (Ray Winstone, ying to Ben Kingsley's yang---see below) supine, 250 pounds of Yorkshire fat, happily simmered and broiled, and long-relaxed muscle, happily slack upon his lounger, baking by the pool. Happy. Reflective. Content.

He lumbers up from his lounge-chair, snug in a Euro nad-hugger speedo (as only a happen man can carry off without shame), and starts to launch his portly bulk into the pool.

Seconds before he does, a boulder, tumbling from the Andalusian heights, thunders inches away from him into the pool.

The boulder, of course, is the Emissary of the Devil, already on its way to Gal Dove's retreat. The Name of this particular Devil is Don Logan (Ben Kingsley, the very incarnation of Rage and the movie's black heart), and he does Hell a credit.

Stop the tape a second. Don Logan shows up at Dove's Spanish villa, maybe hours after the boulder pays its respects to Gal's swimming pool. Logan is preceded by the Dread Black Spectre of his Reputation: everybody Dove knows---his wife and former porn star DeeDee (Amanda Redman), his hapless gin-drenched mate Harry (James Fox), Harry's wife Jackie Julianne White)---all of them know Logan. His wrath is legendary. It's hard to say no to Don Logan, after all.

Now: you see this flick for three reaons: 1) Ben Kingsley 2) Ben Kingsley 3) Ben Kingsley. When Kingsley's off the screen, frankly, you can turn off the DVD and go to sleep. Well, you'll wanna find out what happens, but Kingsley, one of the greatest actors of any age and doubly admirable, in my estimation, because he takes work whenever he can get it (from "Gandhi" to "Species", from "Schindler's List" to "Bloodrayne"---some sneer, I respect)---Kingsley electrifies. He owns "Sexy Beast", consumes it, dominates it with his legend before he enters the picture, stuns, terrifies, brutalizes, bullies his way into sheer and complete hegemony over every living soul on or off the screen when he's in the picture.

Don Logan rules, and Kingsley brings him to life: this skinny, wiry, muscular, tattooed, aggressively in-your-face bald, snapping, hyper-kinetic little creature of hate and hell and fury. He runs "Sexy Beast", he owns this movie: and---he demands---on the part of his crime boss---that Dove return to the world of crime and hate and potential prison time for ONE LAST HEIST.

You've heard that before? Good. Dove doesn't wanna go. Who would blame him? He's happy, for once in his life, and he's relatively safe. I lived for a while in Andalusia; I knew men like Gal Dove. Dove drinks. He lounges. He soaks up rays. He's plump, flabby, soft. You think he can stand up to Logan, the very incarnation of the blood-soaked and hungry-for-more avatar of War?

You'll see. What's the butcher's bill for Paradise? Anything more than that and I'll spoil your fun: suffice it to say that when Kingsley is on-screen, the flick is electric; absent the sneering, snapping Logan, and things drag a bit---but they're still intriguing, in a "Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" kind of way. But Kingsley brings this sick little gutter masterpiece to life: he makes you flinch. He is brutal, possessive, dangerous, monstrous, insanely funny. I'd hire him, or buy him a drink, but then I'm as much a monster as he is.

Truth is, Kingsley is so good, so brutal, so crackling with cruel insane energy, that he basically chews up the flick: he's like a Black Hole, draining everything else white. But it would be wrong to say the other members of the cast don't hold up: they do, in spades. You'll see. Winstone, particularly, is good; stoic, steady, oddly pathetic and noble. Ian McShane, of course, turns in a role as a mafioso sleaze.

Dove, Harry, and pool-boy Enrique (the impossibly glorious Alvaro Monje) go hunting a rabbit; that same rabbit---with a few modifications and a better arsenal---returns to Gal Dove in dreams. The Hunter becomes the Hunted.

Indeed.

JSG

Rating:
Summary: Terrible and dull
Review: Slow. So, so slow and quiet and boring. I would rather watch Apocalypse Now 3 times in a row than sit through the nothingness that is this movie's 1st half. The 2nd half isn't anything better, either. There is some blood, and Kingsley freaks out, but the inevitable heist was monotonous and whatever symbolism the rabbit guy stood for was completely useless and uninviting.

A waste of my 1 1/2 hours.

Rating:
Summary: Teddy Bass? Teddy Bass.
Review: Another example of a great British gangster flick. I always like Ray Winstone, but this is Ben Kingsley's movie. His performance makes you forget everything else he's ever done.

Winstone still holds his own and really is the barometer of this film. He perfectly portrays a former hood who although used to be good has become soft and does not want to go back. He has no choice and momentarily slips back into his old skin.

Scenes to remember are these:

1) The dialogue where Kingley's recounts his learning of the heist and who is behind it.

2) The robbery scene is incredible and really a spectacular work of cinematography.

This movie is awesome and I totally recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Fresh, inventive, and fantastically acted
Review:
I enjoyed this film and, with only a few reservations, recommend it as a fine way to kill an evening with a the girl friend or a buddy.

One shouldn't bring presumptions and expectations along when seeing any film for the first time. Just hit play, sit back, and soak it in the first go around. Having said that, for me, the first go around felt kind of flat.

Ben Kingsley, for all the hype about his character "Don", doesn't present us with a two dimensional character. Don Logan isn't simply an insane antisocial tough guy but a genuinely complex emotional character study.

While the emotional payoff of the film isn't all that it could have been, it's redeemed in part by Ray Winstone's warm and endearing performance. Winstone does a superb job playing opposite the films antagonists as a truly sympathetic character.

Also, the chemistry between the four friends in the first half of the film is just marvelous, the whole supporting cast really give the film it's structure.
Ian McShane is really a sight to behold. In many ways Ian McShane's Teddy Bass character is even more frightening than Kingsley, with Teddy there are no clues as to what motivates his malevolence.

And, despite the critics, I though the dream sequences involving the anthropomorphic rabbit-man were terrific, almost the most intensely unsettling part of the film. Watch the body language of the rabbit-man, that is the sexy beast.

The cinematography is done with a light and easy touch. It's some of the best unassuming and inobtrusive dp work i've seen in a while. It has just enough flash to suite the genre without anchoring it in predictability

There certainly were moments in the film when I said to myself,"wow what a great shot" or just loved the acting skill on display throughout the film. However, I think where the film faltered was in maintaining a consistant air of dread or tension.
Of course, without this, there can't be any real emotional payoff.

The scene upon which the film is supposed to pivot also fell somewhat short, despite my liking the scene, it wasn't presented with a solid enough feel to give it the gravitas it needed. Without the umph in this scene the second half of the movie doesn't build to anything meaningful. In spite of all of that the film is still a joy to watch.

Rating:
Summary: Yew gawt sum nehve suhhshine
Review: Well if you're not too familiar with the thick gangsta London accent you'll have no idea if you're " swuttin lak a fackin cant." Usually I don't watch gangster movies but this movie was slightly different. Ben Kingsley really did sound like a psychotic schizophrenic in the movie that it felt more real. The fact that he was talking to himself in the mirror rambling " yew facked it der yew prolly shuddentive sed yew facked hur." You probably won't cheer as much as you see his demise. But I'll leave you to watch the rest. Awesse yew ga-ing daan