Director: Jonathan Glazer
Starring: Ray Winstone, Ben Kingsley, Ian McShane, Amanda Redman, James Fox

There’s nothing quite like the sight of an Englishman abroad. All shirtless, sunburnt and peeling skin on oversized stomach hanging over tiny shorts, with an extravagant cocktail by his side, the Englishman abroad is a scary thing indeed, a sexy beast understood by nobody who hasn’t spent a summer in Bognor Regis.

Gal Dove (Ray Winstone) is an ex-con who wants nothing more than the life of an Englishman in deepest Spain, and he has it all — the tasteful villa, the young boy-servant, the trophy wife (Amanda Redman), brandy on tap and a swimming pool decorated with a mosaic love-heart pattern. But as he lies in the searing summer sun, sips on a beer and works on his sunburn, a boulder rolls down from the hill above his villa, flies over his cooking body and makes a crater in the bottom of his pool. Along with the boulder, Gal’s past is on its way to destroy his idyllic life as a retiree, and more than his pool is going to get smashed up.

‘Sexy Beast’ is the directorial debut of legendary music video director Jonathan Glazer — previously responsible for clips for Blur, Radiohead, Nick Cave, Massive Attack and most recently UNKLE (who are responsible for this film’s excellent score). It is, at its heart, an old-style British gangster film, drawing on a cast of characters straight from ‘Get Carter’ or ‘The Long Good Friday’. But it is also a subtle character exploration, tracking Gal’s descent back to his old gangster life as the skeletons in his closet manifest themselves in the form of Don Logan (Ben Kingsley), the incarnation of everything that is dangerous about a cockney gangster.

Kingsley, never anything less than a stellar actor, turns in a rare performance here, burning the character of Logan so deeply into your brain that you need to scrub it out with steel wool. Logan is a fragile but vicious psychotic sent to retrieve Gal from his retirement for “one last job” — a bank heist for Mr Big Teddy Bass (a wickedly evil turn from Ian McShane). Logan wants to be loved, and he wants to get along with Gal and his Spanish entourage, but there’s one thing Logan does not understand — the word “no”. Nobody turns down Don Logan — why would they want to? They’re mates!

Gal has no interest in returning to London, but his polite refusals only light Logan’s fuse, and firm rejections sent him into an apoplectic rage. Logan, who argues with himself in the mirror and picks fights with anybody who attempts to intrude on the alternate reality in which his mind lives, is not going home without getting his pal out of retirement, but it’s going to take something extraordinary to break Gal’s resolve.

‘Sexy Beast’ is a violent, bloody and profane mess of a film, but it’s the mess inside the heads of two fascinating characters. Winstone may be condemned to playing gangsters, wife-bashers and child abusers for the rest of his life, but there’s no denying his lovable qualities. Although this is Kingsley’s acting masterclass, his character only works playing off of the subtle bewilderment and stern resolve of Winstone, a man fighting to bury his demons, literally.

Glazer’s surreal, loose touch with the camera is certainly stylised in true first-time director tradition, but he is a mature enough filmmaker to realise the riches he has in front of the lens and not overwhelm them with slick contemporary vision. It is an incredibly funny film, and Logan is in many senses a comic character, blessed with an ability to make you laugh at four letter C words. But the power of ‘Sexy Beast’ is in that uncomfortable intersection between comedy and horror, where Logan’s psychosis stares Gal dead in the face.

Glazer will go on to do wonderful things from here, but starting your career with the best British gangster film since ‘The Long Good Friday’ is no bad way to go about things. See it or I’ll send Don Logan around to convince you.