"Sexy Beast"

Son #2's Review:

Sexy Beast (2000, dir. By Johnathon Glazer). An unconventional heist film (the heist gets about three minutes of screen time) that manages to remain interesting, funny, and tense within its short running time of 89 minutes. The cast is great, especially Ben Kingsley as Don Logan, a psychopathic gangster who doesn’t like taking no for an answer. Ray Winstone is also excellent as an ex-safe cracker who simply wants to live out the rest of his life relaxing poolside at his home in Spain but instead finds his paradise lost when Don pays a visit. Ian McShane also makes a brief yet memorable appearance as a mob boss who radiates calm but remains intimidating. Overall, definitely worth seeing. Also worth mentioning is the fact that there is some great swearing in it. Also worth mentioning is that so many of the characters had strong accents that we had to turn on the subtitles in order to know what they were saying

JV's comments:

To get a full appreciation of Ben Kingsley's performance, imagine if Alec Baldwin's incendiary scene in Glengarry Glen Ross had been stretched out over the course of an entire movie.  To say that Kingsley radiates danger doesn't do him justice.  It's hard to imagine that this is the same actor who portrayed Gandhi all those years ago (or Georges Melies in Hugo, for that matter).  Even when he's the smallest guy in a scene (which is just about every scene), he takes complete command of what's happening.  It's a cliche, but in this movie he's a force of nature - there's no other way to describe it.  Without question, one of the best performances in a career full of great ones.