SEXY BEAST
*****
Directed by Jonathan Glazer.
Starring Ray Winstone, Ben Kingsley, Ian McShane.
Thriller, UK, 88 Minutes, Certificate 18.
Released on Limited and Standard Edition 4K & Blu-ray by Second Sight Films on 28th September
There’s an art to swearing. Most people don’t have it, while there are others who can make it sound like a kind of poetry. Who knew then that back in early 2001, Sir Ben Kingsley, still best known for his Oscar winning turn as the softly spoken Gandhi, would make claim to become one of the best swearers on the planet for his ferocious turn as menacing oddball Don Logan in Jonathan Glazer’s feature directorial debut SEXY BEAST? Now with a stacked special edition from Second Sight Films that remasters the film we can experience once more not just KIngsley’s career re-invention but the rest of what made Glazer’s debut stand out so much from the glut of British gangster flicks that were being released at that time, and how his own style has evolved so much since then.
While British cinema was still in thrall to Guy Ritchie’s cod-Tarantino guns n’ geezers over-ratcheted style, Glazer, best known then for his immense style as an advertising director for the likes of Guinness, immediately sets himself out from the rest of the pack with the films beginning, setting us slap bang in near unfamiliar, for this kind of film, territory. A God’s eye of view of Ray Winstone wearing nothing but a pair of near indecent swimming trunks, lying by his prized pool and baking under the mercilessly hot sun. An ex-pat, ex-criminal, Winstone’s Gal Dove is living the high life in his villa in Spain with Deedee, the love of his life played by Amanda Redman. All this is immediately set out during the film's opening scene, expertly soundtracked by The Stranglers. Bad times seem to come from the horizon when a boulder rolls its way down the hill behind Gal’s villa and straight into his swimming pool. Bad enough for sure, but it only seems to be a harbinger for even worse things when Don Logan (Kingsley) arrives with a demand that Gal come back to London with him for a high stakes score overseen by Teddy Bass, played by a never more malevolent Ian McShane, still best known at the time for his leather jacketed, antique loving Lovejoy.
It is a pretty basic plot but one that is hugely elevated by its high style and fantastic performances. In an impressive career, Winstone has rarely been better than he has been here with his performance of a man put under sudden and impossible pressure. His funny and cheeky performance is worlds apart from the wide, macho cliched performances that other talented actors were giving in far lesser films of this ilk. And McShane, now known for his loquacious roles in the likes of the foul mouthed DEADWOOD and his smooth talking hotel manager in JOHN WICK is downright terrifying here, doing little more than quietly stare and never raising his voice above its smooth, low octaves. His double act (if that’s what you want to call it) with upper class bank manager Harry, played by James Fox, also helps the film hearken back to that latter actor's transgressive London gangster classic PERFORMANCE in more ways than one, showing that this film has much more in common with Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg’s cult masterpiece than the likes of the other Mockney films that littered cinema screens at the time.
As good as these performances are however, the film is completely dominated by Ben Kingsley. Here is a true oddball of a character, at times completely ferocious, then deadpan and completely still before roaring back into terrifying life at the drop of a hat. Never has a character, before or since, being so able to go from being as completely despised and feared as this to completely hilarious and pathetic. The way he calmly talks, and lies, his way out of being arrested at an airport is a comic masterclass with some dialogue that could sound so odd coming from any other actor but Kingsley has a way here of making it sound completely natural here before launching into the very next scene like a rabid rottweiler.
KIngsley talks at length in an illuminating interview where he reveals how Logan was influenced by his love of Shakespeare, particularly the silver tongued, manipulative Iago from Hamlet. It is just one of a handful of lengthy interviews with the likes of Winstone, McShane and the recently departed producer Jeremy Thomas that are also on offer. Glazer himself is absent from the special features, as he always is, but the 4K restoration he personally supervised here is more than enough to make up for his absence, making the films Spanish environment of clear blue skies and sun baked desert shimmer off the screen in complete contrast to the films latter half which is set mainly in the cold and wetter climes of an unforgiving and claustrophobic London. It really feels like a definitive release for a film that has been neglected for far too long on disc with its now pristine widescreen presentation and audio remastering that help punch out the driving, throbbing score by Roque Baños and UNKLE.
In 88 lightning fast minutes, Glazer packs in a lot here with the help of his cast and his already considerable talents as a director here. There are one or two stylistic touches here that are a touch showy, perhaps showing off his advertising and music video roots. It is interesting to see since then how he has completely abandoned such trappings, instead becoming something of a more cerebral, but no less interesting or compelling, director with the likes of UNDER THE SKIN and THE ZONE OF INTEREST in his small, yet compelling filmography. This package however does well to remind us that not only is SEXY BEAST perhaps his most purely entertaining film, it is also one of the greatest British gangster films ever.
Iain MacLeod