Simply A Masterpiece

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Quite possibly the most unique gangster movie I've seen. The part of Don Logan expertly played by Ben Kingsley is easily one of the most intimidating characters ever captured on celluloid. It delivers lines of dialogue that you'll never forget not that you'd want to. It's an absolute perfectly titled film. Worth watching and re-watching to catch any of the little bits you might have missed.

Ignore the moronic review by "Tiggyboo"... who in typically shallow American hubris clearly doesn't get the genius of this film. A seductive, top-class, sopisticated, gratingly tense film, from any director.. however this is Glazer's first and it surpasses Guy Ritchie's stylised and humorous yet shallow efforts. Great photography, brilliant electronic soundtrack and an skilled cast. Nil By Mouth's Ray Winstone, and Ghandi's Ben Kingsley. Both are cleverly cast against type; Winstone is the quite Gal, a retired criminal living with his wife, mate and his mate's wife in a fun, sun-baked escape in Spain. Kingsley's psychopathic Don Logan drives a truck through the peace when arrives and orders Gal to go back to London for one last job. Kingsley is astounding, as his character psychologically tears the skin off Gal, his wife, their friends in a severity unseen in any of the so-called movie villains. Kingsley now joins that list in an unforgettable role in one of 2000's best movies. A solid, well-written, and as unpredictable plot as Don Logan could be.

Sexy beast is one of the highly stylised Brit crime films that followed in the wake of the success of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998). Like that one, it is full of cockney gangsters, camera trickery and some prominent rock tracks on the soundtrack, in this case an opening scene that plays out to 'Peaches' by The Stranglers. This laconic opening sequence indicates from the outset that this is going to be a crime film coming from a slightly different place though, it concludes with a giant boulder rolling down a hill and crashing into the lead character's pool, just missing him by a whisker. From this early point it becomes obvious that this isn't a film that is really going to go for realism and throughout the picture this is maintained with character actions and the final heist itself always seeming slightly absurd like a fever dream.A former gangster, who has retired to Spain, finds his relaxed lifestyle disrupted when one of his old associates turns up demanding that he return to England to be part of a team who will be executing an elaborate robbery.Directed by Jonathan Glazer who recently delivered the bizarre sci-fi film Under the Skin (2013), this is a short and sharp gangster film which is more character-driven than focused on the crime itself. The latter is a memorably surreal undertaking, which is in keeping with other moments from earlier, including freaky nightmare sequences where the lead character has dreams of a demon rabbit. But maybe for most people, the main draw here is the acting performances - Ray Winstone plays a typical character for him but one with a lot less aggression and much more inner fear, Ben Kingsley turns up and chews the scenery as the overbearing criminal Don Logan, while Ian McShane was, for me, even more intimidating as the top crime boss back in the UK, a character full of quiet, intense menace. Sexy Beast is a well-made Brit crime flick which comes from enough of a different angle to ensure that it doesn't feel too derivative, even if stylistically it owes something to the films of Guy Ritchie to an extent.

After a few days puzzling and mulling over the wonderful Under The Skin I though a revisit was required to Glazer's wonderful feature debut. It exceeded my expectations and , like all great movies gave up a whole slew of nuance and forgotten or overlooked details. And an unexpected icing on this particularly eclectic cake, i was very moved. It seems de-riguer to label Logan as the devil incarnate, bit in some senses winstone is the devil who wins out in the end more cunning (in a parochial way) than any of the many devils on display, even ian macshane's terrifying mob boss. as with under the skin, the narrative such as it is is merely a framework to quilt some amazing set-pieces ( and some jarring interruptions of utter mundainity such as winstone's gal waiting on a rain-soaked and colourless bus stop which could be anywhere in the antipodes to winstone's 'baking hot' Spanish villa. there is much here as well to place glazer into the same vaunted pantheon of film makers like Kubrick. these films do not take 10 years to make because of perfectionism unless perfectionism is knowing when the time is right to say a film is finished. After all kubrick's life-long deep passion for making AI and most notably the forever unmade Napoleon, are so distinct by being unmade they are more prefect to that which has been committed and reified using awkward clay. it seems i have been floated onto some netherworld between pretension and deep impacting emotional truth. such is the marker of a great work of art. Glazer i feel has not made at least two. i have yet to see birth but i have a feeling i might have to before the day os out. bravo. go see this and then watch Under the Skin in a few days..