Stylish, but Very Nasty

You can tell from the opening shot, an overhead view of an overweight man baking in the super-hot Spanish sun, that “Sexy Beast” is going to have style that burns. And it does. But there’s more.

The feature debut of Jonathan Glazer, one of Britain’s most sought-after young commercial and music-video directors, “Sexy Beast” also has a strong plot (credit the writing team of Louis Mellis and David Scinto) and a pair of excellent performances, including one by Ben Kingsley as a flesh-and-blood Terminator terrifying enough to forever banish all thoughts of “Gandhi” from your mind.

“Sexy Beast” is also the latest case in point in what has become the most reliable of British genres, the unsentimental gangster film. From “Get Carter” and “The Long Good Friday” through “Croupier” and “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,” U.K. filmmakers have shown a liking and facility for crime stories featuring hard guys tested by intolerable dilemmas.

As his nickname indicates and his physique emphasizes, Gary “Gal” Dove (Ray Winstone) is not as hard a guy as he once was. He’s not even in England anymore but retired to Spain’s Costa del Sol, where he’s as much in love with his wife, DeeDee (Amanda Redman), as with a sybaritic lifestyle where teasing the pool boy and having drinks and dinner with pals Aitch (Cavan Kendall) and Jackie (Julianne White) pass for a day’s work.

Vividly shot by Ivan Bird, “Sexy Beast’s” opening sequence of a sunstruck Gal being parboiled by his pool (“I’m sweating, roasting, you can fry an egg on my stomach”) does more than announce the jazzy, enveloping, music-heavy visual style Glazer brings to the table. It also introduces actor Winstone, previously bleak as they come in two of the grimmest films ever, Gary Oldman’s “Nil by Mouth” and Tim Roth’s “The War Zone,” who goes on to give a strong, charismatic performance as someone desperate to hold on to the good life but not sure if he has the strength to manage it.

And, in a moment when a rogue boulder rolls down a hillside and narrowly misses Gal, the sequence foreshadows the arrival of Don Logan (Kingsley), Gal’s former nemesis from the London underworld and very much an unguided missile himself.

The psychotic Logan is spoken about before he’s seen. He has phoned from Britain to say he’s coming over, and everyone is terrorized by just the mention of his name and the fact that he insists Gal reenter the criminal life for one last job. Even the fake bravado of “what’s the worst that can happen?” is not calming when referring to a man who knows how to hurt people every way they can be hurt.

Logan is first seen from behind, walking through a Spanish airport with the pumped-up and purposeful stride of a human projectile. Played by Kingsley with a goatee and shaved head, the forceful Logan is a coiled-spring presence, a soul-eater with an unswerving instinct for exploiting human weakness.

While one of the mechanisms of “Sexy Beast” is the psychological duel between the vulnerable Gal and his all-menace, all-the-time tormentor, the film also features the nifty burglary scheme that Logan is recruiting for, a plan with an intriguing back story we see as Logan relates it to Gal.

The criminal power behind the plan is the cool and menacing Teddy Bass (British TV star Ian McShane), a.k.a. Mr. Black Magic, who uses an orgy to make the acquaintance of the aristocratic Harry (the veteran James Fox). Harry turns out to run Europe’s most secure safety deposit firm, with a security system that’s all but impregnable. Teddy thinks it can be had, Don thinks he needs Gal for the job, and as the screws tighten, the man himself ends up having to play a terribly dangerous game to survive.

Though it can overreach for emotional effect and overplay its hand at times, most noticeably with an irritating phantom who appears in Gal’s dreams, “Sexy Beast” brings considerable virtues to telling this tale, including a great eye for faces and director Glazer’s palpable excitement at working in the feature medium.

Also a factor, and this is key, was Glazer’s willingness, unusual for a commercial director moving to film, to take on a project that’s strong on people and laced with pithy language. “I purposefully chose something dialogue-intensive and character-driven,” he told Film Comment. “I wanted to learn. It felt silly to accept a script with huge visual set-pieces--that seemed dead to me.” American commercial directors may pay lip service to caring about the script when they turn to features, but their films show that they’re not fooling anyone.

* MPAA rating: R, for pervasive language, strong violence and some sexuality. Times guidelines: The language is strong even for this genre, and the violence is short but brutal.

‘Sexy Beast’

Gal: Ray Winstone

Don Logan: Ben Kingsley

Teddy Bass: Ian McShane

DeeDee: Amanda Redman

Harry: James Fox

Aitch: Cavan Kendall

Jackie: Julianne White

In association with Film Four and Kanzaman S.A., a Recorded Picture Co. presentation, a Jeremy Thomas production, released by Fox Searchlight Pictures. Director Jonathan Glazer. Producer Jeremy Thomas. Screenplay Louis Mellis and David Scinto. Cinematographer Ivan Bird. Editors John Scott, Sam Sneade. Costumes Louise Stjersward. Music Roque Banos. Production design Jan Houllevigue. Running time: 1 hour, 31 minutes.

In limited release.