Sexy Beast 4K 2000

The rugged London crime boss Don Logan (Ben Kingsley) travels to Spain to persuade his friend Gal (Ray Winstone), who has gone straight, to come back and pull off a job in Britain. Gal has gone completely soft and, as Don rightly observes, “has gone a bit dim under the hot Spanish sun.” Gal seems to realize this himself, because he persistently refuses the offer. But Don keeps pushing. So persistently, in fact, that Gal soon ends up with bruises on his face, and his mood takes a turn for the worse.

Dressed in a snow-white shirt and sporting a muscular, bald head, Kingsley takes up exactly half the film. And when he disappears, as the screenwriters intended, it feels like the only injustice in the entire course of this stylish gangster drama. Although, he isn’t the main character there—or even the coolest guy.

Most of the film consists of conversations by the pool and in a restaurant. One character persuades and threatens, while another whines and pushes back. Toward the end, there’s a bit of London. In between—romance, male friendship, principles, and absolutely everything that matters. But the way it’s shot! And the editing! And the dialogue!! Wow! A real treat, not just a movie! You watch it in one sitting. True British cinema at its best: fast-paced and cold as steel piercing the body, accompanied by that charming British “f**king!”

Kingsley is brutal, sharp, and raw here. As a friend pointed out, he’s the spitting image of Ralph Fiennes from “In Bruges.” “Fuck” every other word, furniture smashed in a fit of rage, and a terrifying, relentless truth in every line. (Although “In Bruges” came later, so it’s actually Fiennes who inspired Kingsley.)

...And yet—and yet, despite all this—Ben is only truly natural in a single scene, when, covered in blood by the pool, he screams “I love you!” to a fool named Jackie. A quiet whirlpool from which lava erupts—that’s what this film about Ben Kingsley unmistakably reveals. You can’t act something like that—you just have to walk into the frame, stand there, and walk out. It’s with actors like this that the most poignant classic melodramas are made, when the characters on screen simply gaze at each other in silence, while the audience’s knees tremble and tears stream down their faces.

And here’s another detail—Kingsley is stunning in his monologues (in “Sexy Beast,” there’s a brilliant speech about sexual harassment on a plane and a conversation with the bathroom mirror). However, this talent of his was already evident in Polanski’s “Death and the Maiden” and all his other films. After all, he’s a theater actor at heart.