Review: Sexy Beast

Sexy Beast.... what a great title for what is an otherwise quite bland movie.

The protagonist, Gal, is an ex-thief who lives out his retirement soaking up the sun in his Malibuesqe house in southern Spain. He has an ex-porn star wife, several well tanned friends and even a Spanish pool boy. Talk about the high life, eh? Things were good until Don Logan (Ben Kingsley) arrives and drags him out of his sun soaked stupor to convince him to help out with a job back in London. 

I guess convince is the wrong word. To put it simply, Logan is crazy and  isn't going to accept any answer other than "yes". If Gal was ever some sort of hardened gangster and criminal mastermind, he certainly didn't show it in his interactions with Logan where he came off as limp-wristed and weak. You just knew he was going to cave and do the job. 

What I don't understand, however, is why they were so insistent on having him for the caper anyway. If he was some sort of expert thief, you would think their plan would be a bit more elaborate than drilling through the wall of the bath house next door and shorting out the alarm system. What's so sophisticated about that? Seems fairly crude to me, especially on a bank that, as we are told, has one of the best security systems in Europe. 

Then there's the accents.... oye the accents. To say they were thick cockney is putting it far too mildly. They were down right incomprehensible. I had to turn on the captioning just to understand what was going on. Not that it mattered,  the dialogue was just a bunch of drivel peppered in with a few f-words..... for good measure, of course.

If there is one redeeming quality in this movie it is Kingsley as Ben Logan. Part of it, surely, is the sheer novelty of an actor as refined as Kingsley ranting, raving, pissing on floors and dropping f-bombs like they were going out of style. I have to say that it was quite an interesting performance, especially the scene in the airplane where he simply refused to put out his cigarette so the plane could take off. 100% pure bad ass with no decency. There's something to respect in a character like that.