Revisit: Sexy Beast

Any decent accounting of villains in cinema should include not one but two entries for Jonathan Glazer’s outstanding first feature, Sexy Beast (2001). There’s Don Logan, a tyrannical live wire embodied by the unexpected but undeniable Ben Kingsley, as well as Teddy Bass, imbued by Ian McShane with the darkness and gravity of the devil himself. With these two standing in the way of the protagonist’s happiness, the viewer might expect a bleaker outcome than what actually results. But, despite all odds, Sexy Beast goes somewhere unexpected, and it does so with depth and panache in under an hour and a half. It’s a remarkably self-assured debut from a director who has gone on to establish himself as a master of multiple genres with an inimitable style. It’s well worth a revisit or a first watch.

Early on, we’re treated to the point of view of a boulder rolling down an incline toward Gal Dove’s (Ray Winstone) hillside villa somewhere in Spain. The horizon tumbles, changes places with the ground, and it looks like Gal, standing by his infinity pool, is about to get splattered like a bug. The rock misses him by a hair and plunges into the pool, smashing the tiles at the bottom. In fact, near-death is a recurring theme in the film’s opening scenes, including a lucky rabbit’s escape from a misfiring rifle, not once but twice. It’s a clever way to seed the idyllic setting with a shadow of menace. Gal seems to be living a life of luxury and contentment, with the wife he adores, DeeDee (Amanda Redman), and little to do but lounge in the sun tanning himself into a slab of fine leather. But something is coming for him and, like the combination of gravity and gunpowder, it’s both inevitable and man-made.

The first villain’s entrance is telegraphed and drawn out like the appearance of the shark in Jaws. We gather that Gal used to be some kind of crook back in England, but he’s earned his retirement in Spain and considers himself to be out of the game for good. While out to dinner with friends, he receives word that Don Logan is on the way to pay a visit. Everyone at the table goes pale and quiet. Panic shivers in their eyes. Whoever or whatever Don Logan may be, just the sound of his name seems to put the fear of God in these people. Gal, ordinarily composed and affable, puts on a brave face and reassures DeeDee that, whatever this fearsome Don Logan wants, the answer will be no.

Cut to the actual Don Logan, a slender man in a short-sleeve shirt, strutting through the airport. It’s a comical moment of dashed expectations, and Kingsley plays both sides of it. He looks at once perfectly ordinary and strangely coiled, like a scorpion disguised as an accountant. The nimble editing by John Scott and Sam Sneade cuts from scene to scene with an eye for revealing moments. Here’s Logan, sitting erect in Gal’s living room, brusquely deflecting all attempts at small talk. He’s short-tempered and rude, coarse in his language and manners, but with a sadistic gleam in his eyes as if he’s enjoying watching those around him squirm. Kingsley mentioned in interviews that he channeled his own mother-in-law in his characterization of Logan, especially in scenes where he improvised dialogue. One cringes to imagine what holiday dinners at the Kingsley household must have been like. When he corners Gal in the kitchen, Logan berates him with a violence that falls just short of physical. Lunging with his gleaming little cannonball of a head, he seems to punch Gal in the face with his words without actually touching him. “No! No! No! No! No!” he yells, more articulate in the purging of his rage than in the words he uses.

Later in the film, after a series of twists and cliffhanger moments, Gal is faced with another kind of villain. Teddy Bass is the mastermind of a heist involving both Logan and Gal, and his affect is all oily charisma and twinkling eyes. He’s convinced that Gal is hiding something, and his watchful gaze is like a death ray. Gal is an accomplished liar, perfectly calm and natural in his dissembling even as crosscuts reveal the bloody secret he’s keeping. But Teddy has a predatory sense about these things, almost as if he can see the flashes of guilt inside Gal’s mind. McShane plays Teddy as a nearly immobile vessel for his dark eyes, which see everything. He’s a deep, still pool concealing pointy, deadly things.

As for the heist, Glazer anticipates the zippy score and execution of Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven, released later in 2001. But the most fascinating aspect of Sexy Beast is how its quick cuts, sound design and visual inventiveness prefigure the breadth of stylistic choices that would come to define Glazer’s cinematic vision in the two decades since. There’s the personification of Gal’s fear, appearing in visions that anticipate the liminal purgatory of Under the Skin (2013). Long takes and lingering close-ups allow the actors to shade their performances with nuance, going to uncomfortable places, as Nicole Kidman did in her bravura one-take in Birth (2004). And, as he did with such profound effect in The Zone of Interest (2023), Glazer leaves key moments off-screen by suggesting them with sound and score, situating the horror in the viewer’s mind rather than in the eye.

There’s an indulgent moment, right at the end, where these elements come together in something like a punchline, and we’re treated to a sight which by all rights should not be seeable. Maybe the biggest twist is that Sexy Beast is a happy story after all, and that even the two scariest villains you’ve ever seen couldn’t stop Gal Dove from living his best life. The words “sexy beast” are never spoken in the film, although they sound like something Don Logan would hurl as a taunt that lands because it rings true. Gal really does have a way of getting what he wants, through sweat and charm. Here he is, against all odds, tanning by the pool where the freshly repaired tiles have patched up all the cracks and fissures of his wayward past, and his fear is finally put to rest.