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Rating: Gal, a former English gangster with a bit of a belly and sun-tanned skin resembling leather, is enjoying life on the Costa del Sol: a kitsch villa, swimming pool, DeeDee the ex-porn star wife, and friends Aitch and Jackie, fellow countrymen on a cheap boozy holiday. Everything is fine until a boulder rolls down the hill and crashes into the pool: a metaphor as subtle as an elephant in a china shop, signalling that peace is over.
Sure enough, Don arrives: Ben Kingsley in anti-Gandhi mode, a psychopath who fires off insults like bullets and infects the screen like a virus. Sent by boss Teddy to drag Gal back to London for the fateful “last job”. Why this gang needs Gal, when they already have enough men, remains a profound mystery. But a cliché wants it so, and a cliché it shall be.
Kingsley doesn’t act: he overwhelms, crushes, devours. It’s a pity that today excess sounds a bit dated, and his crude tirades come off like a second-hand Tarantino in full indigestion.
The film delves into the toxic relationships between these men and the women orbiting around them: Gal who adores DeeDee, Don channeling repressed rage and romantic resentment onto Jackie. That’s where the drama pulses, more than in the heist itself.
Winstone and McShane join Kingsley to complete a triad of British actors who alone are worth the ticket price. Winstone, as Gal, appears laid-back, mentally already “retired” and unlikely as a criminal, but with that melancholic sweetness that almost makes you forget the inconsistencies; McShane, on the other hand, plays Teddy, cold and cynical as a fridge, capable of freezing the screen with a single look. Three distinct, well-defined, and balanced characters who support the film when the plot takes a break from the clichés.
The visual contrast works too: sun-drenched, lazy Spain against damp and claustrophobic England; a frenetic editing style and various dreamlike inserts like the rabbit hunt, which feel more like fillers than narrative necessities. At least the film runs under 100 minutes: a rare luxury today, when everything seems bound to be a director’s cut.
In the end, Sexy Beast remains above all Kingsley’s creature: without him, it would be a small crime movie, albeit a cult one (a label that doesn’t mean much anymore), even spawning a failed prequel series on Paramount+.
And even with him, it’s still a movie with a plot hole as big as the boulder that landed in the pool.
Directed by Jonathan Glazer, a scarcely prolific director—four films in twenty years—recently risen to new popularity with the excellent The Zone of Interest.
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