Sexy Beast is a stylised, gritty, British gangster flick with a bit of a twist released in 2000 fitting it squarely in the post-Lock Stock era of stylised, gritty, British gangster flicks with a twist. However, I would say this is the best non-Guy Ritchie post-Lock Stock gritty, British gangster flick with a twist, because the twist is so god damned cool. The twist of course, if you know anything about this flick, is that Ben Kingsley swears a bunch and is pretty scary.
"You are god damned right I'm scary"
The main character of Sexy Beast is a dude named Gal, which when pronounced in the British accents of this flick sounds like Gail, which people in the past have been named, but I don’t think anyone would ever name their kid Gal, maybe it’s a nickname, but I don’t see a dude as scary as Ray Winstone being nicknamed Gal, Baby Puncher maybe, but not Gal.
"Call me Baby Puncher"
Any who Gal is retired in Spain from his life of crime, so you kind of expect this to be the old cliché “One Last Job” style heist flick, which it is, but the majority of the movie is about convincing Gal to do the job, which is where Don Logan (played by Ben Kingsley) come in. Don is a scary dude, you know this before he even sets foot on-screen because the mere mention of his name makes “Baby Puncher” Winstone lose his shit with fear in a fancy ass restaurant, it’s a pretty great scene where he yammers on about calamari because he can’t think of anything else to say.
Ben Kingsley seriously kills it man, this movie would not be really worth watching without him, I know this because about 20 minutes from the end he disappears and the only thing that kept we watching was to see if Ian McShane did anything Swearengen-esque.
He doesn't but here's a bad ass picture of Al Swearengen to make up for it
Some people know how to swear. I mean pretty much everyone knows how to say a swear word, most of them are short, one syllable words which are easy to sound out and say. However, there is a special class of people who REALLY just know how to say “FUCK” and it turns out the guy who played Gandhi and Itzhak Stern is in that special class of people.
"Fuck off Hitler"
There is a special art to swearing, and I think the British have a style all their own. Americans, we use them like blunt instruments to beat away there is not subtlety to what John McClane says or what Kevin Smith writes it’s all about shock. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with that, I’m American and that’s exactly how I use swear words. The British on the other hand use swears like assassins use knives, they cut you down and then stab you repeatedly and precisely until you are so dead you can’t get anymore dead from the swears, if you don’t think this makes any sense watch Ben Kingsley swear in this clip
(Disclaimer: A bunch of bad words are said NSFW, also ignore the last bit)
So yeah I really enjoyed this movie. There was one thing I didn’t really “get” so if you’ve seen the movie and have some understaning of the whole Frank from Donnie Darko looking rabbit dude please enlighten me in the comment section.
Happygerbaloon's Take on Life 