| Sexy Beast | |
|---|---|
original film poster |
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| Directed by | Jonathan Glazer |
| Produced by | Jeremy Thomas |
| Written by | Louis Mellis David Scinto |
| Starring | Ray Winstone Ben Kingsley Amanda Redman Ian McShane |
| Music by | Roque Baños |
| Cinematography | Ivan Bird |
| Editing by | John Scott Sam Sneade |
| Studio | Recorded Picture Company |
| Distributed by | FilmFour (UK) Fox Searchlight Pictures |
| Release date(s) | September 13, 2000 (TIFF) January 12, 2001 (UK) June 13, 2001 (US) |
| Running time | 89 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom Spain |
| Language | English |
| Budget | £3 million |
| Box office | £31,765,934 |
Sexy Beast is a 2000 British-Spanish crime drama film directed by Jonathan Glazer and starring Ray Winstone, Ben Kingsley, and Ian McShane. Produced by Jeremy Thomas, it was Glazer's debut feature film, who had previously been a music video director for videos such as Rabbit in Your Headlights for British electronica group UNKLE,[1] and commercials for companies such as Guinness and Levi.
The film earned Kingsley an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.[2] In 2004 the magazine Total Film named Sexy Beast the 15th greatest British film of all time.[3]
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Ex-con and expert safe-cracker Gary "Gal" Dove (Ray Winstone) has served his time behind bars and blissfully retired to a Spanish villa with his beloved wife Deedee (Amanda Redman). He also has the company of longtime friend Aitch and his wife Jackie. Their idyllic life is shattered by the arrival of an old criminal associate, Don Logan (Ben Kingsley), who is intent on enlisting Gal in a bank heist back in London.
Dove politely but firmly refuses Logan's many requests to join the heist, but Logan will not back down. After revealing a lingering infatuation with Jackie, he makes several unwelcome attempts at reconnecting with her. Logan eventually grows violent, hurling torrents of abuse at the group while at the same time spitefully painting himself as a victim of their infidelity. After storming away in a rage, Logan boards a plane back to England, only to be kicked off for refusing to put out his cigarette. He returns to Dove's home with ominous intentions, smashing a wine glass into Dove's ear. Deedee shoots Don with a shotgun, immobilizing him. The four friends join in their efforts to kill him, first beating him, stomping him, shooting him again, and finally crushing his skull.
Organizing the heist is Teddy Bass, a powerful crime lord, who has learned about the bank's vault from Harry, the bank's CEO whom he met at a sex orgy. To provide cover for Logan's death, Dove returns to London to perform the job. When asked by Bass about Logan's whereabouts, Dove feigns ignorance and claims Logan had called him "from Heathrow." However, Bass is visibly suspicious, and Dove's anxieties mount.
During the heist, Bass' crew use surface-supplied diving gear to drill into Harry's bank vault from a pool in a neighbouring bath house. The water from the pool floods the vault and shorts its security system. While helping to empty the vault's safe deposit boxes, Dove secretly pockets a pair of large ruby earrings encrusted with diamonds. After the job is successfully completed, Dove's lack of joviality further raises Bass's suspicions. Bass offers Dove a ride to the airport, but along the way, stops by Harry's home. Inside, Bass kills Harry in cold blood and immediately and pointedly questions Dove again about Logan. Dove merely responds, "I'm not into this any more." Back in the car, Bass suggests he knows what happened to Logan, saying, "Spain, eh? I must drop in sometime. Pay my respects." He offers Gal 10 pounds in payment for his services, saying "See, If I cared, Gal, if I fucking cared, if I gave a sodding fuck about Don..." before kicking him out of the car and driving away.
In the final scene, back in Spain, Dove is again home surrounded by his friends and by Deedee, who is seen wearing the ruby-diamond earrings that he stole, and it is revealed that Logan is buried deeply under the double-heart insignia at the bottom of their pool.
Producer Jeremy Thomas later remembered his experience making the film:
Sexy Beast was the beginning of a new phase for me of working with first time filmmakers. Jonathan Glazer was a television commercials director in the UK, and a wonderful talent. We were sent this script which he was attached to, and out came this wonderful film. It was very stimulating having a first time talent... The dialogue as you see in this film is exceptional. I had never read a script like it, and I thought, this has got to be made. It was very difficult to get insurance on the film actually. When the American studio bought the film, their legal department said: "You cannot make this." It has something like 300 uses of the word "cunt", and 400 "fucks", but somehow it passed the censorship and got out there.[4]
The film has received very positive reviews, currently holding an aggregate rating of 85 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 117 reviews.[5] Another aggregate review website, Metacritic, has given it a rating of 79 percent, a rating which classifies the film as receiving "Generally favorable reviews" by the website's rating standards.[6] It received high praise from writers at the San Francisco Chronicle,[7] Entertainment Weekly,[8] Slate,[9] Rolling Stone[10] and the Los Angeles Times,[11] but was panned by Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post who described some of the film's moments as "Ben Kingsley spraying saliva-lubricated variants of the F-word into the atmosphere like anti-aircraft fire for 10 solid minutes."[12] It was also described as "often enjoyable" but "massively uneven" by Variety.[13]
Ben Kingsley's performance received a majority of the accolades given to Sexy Beast, winning Best Supporting Actor awards from the Broadcast Film Critics Association, Boston Society of Film Critics, Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association, Florida Film Critics Circle, San Diego Film Critics Society, Southeastern Film Critics Association and the Toronto Film Critics Association. He also was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award (losing to Ian McKellen for his performance in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring), a Golden Globe and an Academy Award (losing both to Jim Broadbent for his performance in Iris).
In addition, the film also won Best Director and Best Screenplay from the British Independent Film Awards and Special Recognition ("For excellence in filmmaking") from the National Board of Review.
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