Gal (Ray Winstone) is a happy man. The happiness many film hardly has a grasp in showing it. He is lying on his back looking at the hot and soaked sun of sheer brutal heat. He drips those moments of scorching heat with the adjectives he could collect and the experience of that jubilation he could describe slowly and steadily because he has got all the time in this long and isolated villa in Spain. He is tanned and toasted as any English man’s skin would go about. He loves his wife Deedee (Amanda Redman) and has a nice friendly couple Aitch (Cavan Kendall) and voluptuous Jackie (JulianneWhite). A man named Don (Ben Kingsley) will arrive in this stillness of heaven and wreck it in a sputter of a sparky foulness. It is not unusual situation and sure would have noticed that it is an unusual description of that story, because that is the style “Sexy Beast” beckons.In the regular churn of film making the simplest line to be put upon the previous paragraph is that Gal is a retired criminal and Don comes to ask him, sorry, command him to shut up and accept the job. What makes the difference of such a run of the mill idea? It is the making and the audacity of Ben Kingsley to pull off such a disgusting role in an ugly likeable performance. The film is a surreal outlook and the art of director Jonathan Glazer to weave it together is not “tarantinized’ but a true capability of a new face director at that time.
In a way it is a sexy film. The beast part is of course the character of Ben Kingsley. He comes ruthlessly into the life of the peace and resting. Then literally demands a yes from this poor retired man who again and again with fear and stubbornness explains his situation of having given up the job. The scene in which Don gives his hearsay about the job from a man named Stan (Darkie Smith) whose boss is Teddy (Ian McShane) is a landmark editing work. Every one is given this aura of introduction through the fear of other characters. When Jackie comes by and tells she got the call from Don, every one is shaken and the ambience among them is quietly shattered in to pieces. Similarly when Teddy is introduced, it is through how Don says not in a respect but in an egoistic fear to Gal is how we fear Teddy.
It is a perfection of film making which has a razor sharp photography by Ivan Bird. We have seen the camera being placed in quite unorthodox places but to place it in unexpected time in an all tense scene makes this scary suspenseful of when are we to be faced with a pointed gun. Of course we never will be but how well they use the unavailability of the frames outside of the screen (which has only been improperly used in silly horror films) in a certain way that peaks the anxious demon in us. With an editing team of John Scott and Sam Sneade, it is a style we have seen but a twist of a strange kind in aligning it which is impeccable in its approach and presentation.
In a simple one liner of a story, the concentration is on the persuasion and pungent swearing of Don to Gal that becomes the film. It is not cocky but a flash of classiness in the esoteric stand the character takes on. It could have been a complete joke if for one second we stopped believing and fearing this character of Don. Yet Kingsley maintains on a leash ironically for such a filthy personality to make it slide through the slits of admiring the childish psychotic behaviour this man possess. And Winstone never side steps from his Gal, a man who transparently understand this coercive prick. He stays calm and counts the minute and moment to make him vanish forever. He knows it is not an option but a fantasy to be agonized.
How simple of a story gets so much of an elite class in its making? I might go overboard in praising the film for it is a regular outline splashed with a stylish tone seen one too many in Guy Ritchie works. Yes it is flashy and at a go reminds of those films but when it is slightly sliced off there is an obsession in perfection. Where Ritchie’s cult classics tried to be overly cocky (in a very likeable fashion), “Sexy Beast” is obstinate in its stand of displaying shirtless old men who we can imagine having their glory days of physique and style in youth. It is not what the film shows but what it makes imagine based on the presentation and subtleties of these men and women.
Some of the symbols and events would not make much sense but it fits. There is a note which Glazer mesmerizes us through out the film that even the weirdest, strangest, idiotic and surreal happenings add a beauty in a much unexplainable outlook. It is clean in its clinical approach on certain scenes and shamelessly brutal in bombastic fashion in other scenes. It is the realization of that line of understanding and display through the performances, photography, editing and direction which makes a very straightforward and pastoral film a classic presentation.
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