SEXY BEAST Review by: Donnie Cock Directed by: Jonathan Glazer Sexy Beast Website

This was a pretty good movie. I saw it a few months ago when it was still in the theater and decided to rent the dvd to see if it was still good. yep, it was still pretty good.

The film is about a retired british criminal (Ray Winstone) living the high life in Spain. It's insinuated that this retired criminal quite being criminal after a stint in prison. I don't blame him, prison could very well rehabilitate a person. During his peaceful existence in Spain he gets an invite for an encore criminal performance. Everything gets fucked up when an old criminal friend (Ben Kingsley) flies to Spain to talk him into accepting the job.

This was the first feature length film directed by Jonathan Glazer. before this flick he directed music videos for musicians like Blur, radiohead, and Jamiroquai. it seems a logical step for a director of music video¹s labeled "brilliant" to move to film. Fortunately, Sexy Beast didn¹t come across as hour and a half music video. This is something that I am really happy about. Small elements reminiscent of glazer's past were evident but they didn't seem to destroy the film. The clichés and gimmicks of the music video world work. At least in my humble opinion.

It¹s a very wordy film, alot of dialogue, alot to listen to. Maybe I noticed this cause their accents were kind of hard to get used to? It also seemed like the set didn¹t seem to change a whole hell of alot either. Keep in mind that these points are not a good enough reason to avoid this film. I just found myself focusing on the dialoge more than I usually do.

Ben Kingsley and Ray Winston kick ass. I saw Mr. Winstone for the first time in a film by Gary Oldham called Nil By Mouth. Now that flick fucking hurt. Makes me ache just thinking about it. Try to see it sometime. Ray has been on my bad to the bone list ever since that flick. As for Ben Kingsley, he is just a golden bad ass. I watch the evilness ooze from his character and think of his portrayal of Ghandi years ago.

Before returning the DVD I tried to listen to the commentary track. It had Kingsley and some guy claiming to be the producer named Jeremy Thomas. The commentary track was shit. All they did was boost glazer's ego by desiring how much they were amazed at this directorial debut. The did this over and over and over again. I don't know what I was looking for in the commentary but i sure wasn't looking for a couple of guys jerking off jonathan Glazer. Truth be told I couldn¹t finish the commentary. I got about halfway through and gave up. Maybe it got interesting maybe not. Don't get me wrong, the movie was still pretty good.