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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Sexy Beast

  
 
sleazenation
23:05 / 15.09.05
So, I was watching this again of C4 this evening, reflecting on the fact that no matter howmany times I watch it, I can never get enough of Sexy Beast, when it occured to me that we had never really had a proper Sexy Beast thread (I checked, please don't tell me i missed something).

For the uninitiated, Sexy Beast is about a man attempting to make a break with the past attempting to be the immovable object against the irresistable force that is Don Logan.

And what a force Don is. Don Logan oozes violence, but it isn't conveyed in what he does as much as much as in how he relates to people and they react to him. Everyone is scared of Don because no-one is quite sure what he's going to do next, mix up his words again, make another awkward and unfunny joke or stub his cigarette out in someones eye...?

So, have many other people seen this? what did you think?
 
 
■
07:17 / 16.09.05
I was thinking of starting one last night (it's the first time I've watched it all the way through), and I'm also amazed that no-one else has.
Anyway, the great thing about Don is that Kinglsey realistically portrays the way someone can switch from friendly and charming to totally fucking evil in a fraction of a second. Don just doesn't understand emotions in any way at all. Winstone is right when he says the real reason Don's there is Jacqui (sp?) because he's trying to process feelings he doesn't recognise that have been sparked by a complete misunderstanding of what love is (illustrated by the way even she sticks a boot in - he's got it very wrong).
What I noticed most at the end, though, was the unstated way Lovejoy seemed to be bargaining with Winstone for his life by ensuring someone knows and can spread how much he didn't care about Don when he clearly is in some way gay (he strikes me as a bit of a BB Craig, actually). It's a much more nuanced film that I initially gave it credit and I think I may watch it again, soon.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
07:37 / 16.09.05
I don't think Don is ever friendly or charming: there's always an obvious air of menace there. See that scene after he first arrives wherein the four ex-pats sit and try to make small talk with him, only for it to fail at every turn.

One of the things I like most about the film is how the themes overlap and blur into one another: love, masculinity, the acceptable limits of both in a violent male culture, gender, the male body, sexuality, homosexual anxiety... swimming pools. I love how Gal's reliance on his wife, his ability to be almost feminine (his name's Gal, ffs!) is a source of strength as much as it's something that alienates him from the culture he's left behind. And, in a sense, it's the reason he's able to survive. It's also contrasted with Don's anxiety about Jackie "trying to put a finger up my arse" (yet of course, she's the one he's obsessed with), and whatever the fuck is going on in Lovejoy's head.

Superb film.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
09:19 / 16.09.05
First time I watched it, bizarrely enough, since it's been on my radar and recommended to me to watch for ages. I thought Kingsley's performance was absolutely fucking terrifying...like primal Id or something, a complete child, pure amygdala with no frontal lobe control, but a child with a huge capacity for violence and connections to make that violence more real than anyone could bear (family etc...). Talk about menacing...total fucking nutter! The scene in the kitchen wear he is bobbing his head around and kicking the cabinets and keeps lurching at Ray Winstone, the stream of consciousness babble that profanely pours out of his mouth, his inability to keep any lid on his thoughts pouring out of his mouth...superb, awful, amazing acting (from Gandhi to that?).

Lovejoy managed to look really fucking hard as well, whcih must surely have been his screen-test for 'Deadwood.'

A really mature gangster flick, reminded me a bit of 'Face' in places, which also stars Winstone (and Tim Roth...and, er, Damon Albarn, though mercifully he gets butchered quite early on, and in a very grisly fashion) and is equally groovy.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
09:21 / 16.09.05
when he clearly is in some way gay

Like, say, being shagged by the bank vault owner?
 
 
sleazenation
09:48 / 16.09.05
I think you've mixed up Don Logan and Teddy Bass...
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
10:27 / 16.09.05
I thought Fly was referring to Teddy Bass...
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
10:32 / 16.09.05
And whoops, 'Face' actually starts Robert Carlyle, not Tim Roth at all.

Great movie

If you liked Sexy Beast, you'll love it.
 
 
■
10:36 / 16.09.05
when he clearly is in some way gay

No, I did mean Lovejoy. The thing is it's not entirely clear that that sex scene is something he wants to be taking part in. It plays like an initiation or payment made to get into the plan, hence the ambiguity of killing Fox -is he just covering his tracks, getting his own back or making sure there's no-one who knows he is gay?
 
 
■
10:43 / 16.09.05
I don't think Don is ever friendly or charming: there's always an obvious air of menace there.

I will have to differ on that, as there is something about his manner which is strangely appealing. He does try in his own limited way to be matey, and it's a style that probably plays well with the sort of guys we see before the heist. Out of that context, though, it's continually creepy and falls flat. You must find some of his more creative ramblings very funny.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
12:11 / 16.09.05
Not at all...it seems more that he has learned the arduous task of being anything but purely rage-centred selfish with great difficulty and that he'd much rather be kicking someone's head in that having to relate to anybody at all...
 
 
sleazenation
18:00 / 16.09.05
Don is... lacking in social skills. There is something almost autistic about him in the way in which he has problems conforming to the norms of society. There is no charm in Don logan, so trace of social grace - in fact it is his total lack of social grace that add the ominous sense of unease that permeate all his scenes with the two couples.

He doesn't even fit in with his fellow criminals. He is alone. He is literally alone when he first gets the call about the job and when he goes to the club he is there with his contact alone. There are no jokes, no fun. The only time we see don trying to tell a joke he miss-times it.

There is also a dim awareness and sadness within Don - he knows that there is something that he's missing out on, but doesn't quite know what it is...

What Don does know is how to bully, how to hector, how to attack - he does this as much with words as he does with physical violence. But physical violence is always there seething under the surface of the linguistic violence.

Make no mistake- while his screeds might seem humourous at the remove of the cinema screen, if you laughed at him in person Don would grab the nearest object and stab you with it until you weren't moving any more. That is why everyone is so on edge around him - they know that one wrong word and don would go berserk.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
19:36 / 16.09.05
Actually I thought Don was actually... I'm not sure what the word is. Insane covers too much ground. That scene where he's conversing with himself in front of the mirror was the most telling part and I'm surprised no-one's mentioned it. One part of him clearly talking to the other until he gets so frustrated that the violent part takes over completely (multiple personalities? Psychosis?). Sometimes he's charming but that doesn't make him less frightening, it makes him more so because you don't know when the part of him that's angry will step forward, take control and slam a bottle over your head. The sad part of him and the angry part of him aren't connected to each other.
 
 
■
22:34 / 16.09.05
I took it that it's not that he's talking to different parts of himself. He's very quickly rehearsing all the arguments he might use to explain why he hasn't brought Winstone home and saying the most convincing ones out loud. None of them work. He thinks astonishingly quickly and is aware of what's going on all the time (see the scene notices the pool kid without ever moving his eyes). He realises that not only has he fucked up the mission and everyone hates him but that none of it will get him closer to Jackie, so he pounces in desperation.

It worries me a little that I sympathise so much more than everyone else with Don. I think he could be that he reminds me too much of a friend I once had (still have - in a creepy, unwilling and wrong way).
 
 
■
00:41 / 17.09.05
while his screeds might seem humourous at the remove of the cinema screen, if you laughed at him in person Don would grab the nearest object and stab you with it until you weren't moving any more
Oh, yes, agreed. I did laugh out loud occasionally at things he said, though, which I think Kingsley was trying to put across as humour. I'll have to watch it again to find out what they were. Humour is something he is testing and, while he gets it right occasionally, his overall demeanour utterly destroys the impact.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
06:04 / 17.09.05
Isn't the motivation of the London side of the bank job a bit deliberately ill-defined, though? Why *must* they have Gal on the team, there doesn't seem to be anything he can particularly do that nobody else can, no mad safe-cracking skillz, or related. If Gal's such a fat, useless piece of shit, as Don Logan repeatedly says, why would Teddy Bass insist on recruiting him in the first place? Similarly, Bass, we're led to believe, doesn't especially need the money, the bank job seems more like a rich man's idle fancy than anything else. And does Logan really care about Jacqui? On one level, possibly, once he's in Spain, but it's difficult to imagine him having lain in bed worrying about her when she wasn't around. So isn't this a film about retirement, basically - Bass, whether or not he'd enjoy it that way normally, pretty clearly isn't having his love scene with James Fox for fun, but then he doesn't need the money, so... And Don Logan's incoherent rage (bad, laddish jokes, imminent psychosis,) seems to be the kind of thing one'd maybe expect from a damaged soldier who can't quite accept that the war's over, that his job is now redundant.

So; work is a place where you'd routinely accept being done up the ass (and not in a good way) by a City banker, or, alternatively, being flown out of the country to bother people who no longer want anything to do with you, just to stay in the game. In that sense, Gal's indolence at the end seems like a victory - Granted, he's tanning himself to leather with a porn star wife in the blazing Spanish sun, he's not actually *doing* anything, but then again, at least he's not doing anything all that bad.

As the credits roll, it looks to be pretty clear that this is the last the world is going to hear from Gal. And who can blame him, if that's what having his job is like?

It's arguably a bit of its time (work as the great Satan not being a theme that crops up a lot these days, we all have to put our shoulders to the wheel to save the planet from Toni B and Gorge, retirement's not an option, they shall not be ignored, etc,) but still, good movie.
 
 
Cherielabombe
09:49 / 17.09.05
I actually think, on repeated viewings, that the only reason Don has recruited Gal for the job is because he wants to see Jackie.

My favorite scene is when Don and Gal are at the bar and Don sort of whispers, "The thing is... I quite liked her." The closest Don will get to an admission of love (except on his death bed). When Gal says, "What was that, Don?" Don sternly replies, "You 'eard."

While in reality you would never want to be near Don, he is such a wonderful character to watch.

I must say, as a film, I have seen this movie countless times yet it never seems to get old.
 
 
Tom Coates
10:14 / 17.09.05
Isn't getting him back in the game more a statement of power and control than it is utility? Doesn't matter if he's useful or not - you don't get to walk away from those people.
 
 
sleazenation
12:38 / 17.09.05
I more got the impression that getting Gal back involved was Don's idea, rather than Teddy's - Teddy doesn't really give a fuck about anyone.

Don has little standing within the 'gang' - he's a footsoldier, a liability that no-one really wants anything to do with. I think what he was hoping in getting Gal back involved was a feather in his cap as well as seeing Jaqui again.

It is because it is more his idea to get Gal that he takes Gal's knockback personally...

Don's feeling for Jacqui only really come into play once he's there - and are amplified to crisis point by Gal's resistence...
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
12:56 / 17.09.05
This is indeed a great film and Ben Kingsly's performance has to be one of the best on-screen "nutters" ever.

Each time I watch the film I realise something new about Don. For example, previously I hadn't given him enough credit for how intelligent and calculating a character he actually is. e.g. the way he gets thrown off the plane and then get's himself out of trouble with the airport police shows a chilling level of planning and foresight, sending as it does the signal to Ian McShane's character that "all is not going according to plan in Spain".

Indeed, for the first time, the other night I finally realised that Don may have even planned to go to Spain to get Gal to put him out of his misery; for he must have known Gal would refuse. It's the way his intense, staring eyes hardly blink when speaks/rants/reasons out loud, as though there's a very big human-shaped hole in his soul and he's letting you look in and share the sheer horror of it all. It's both a cry for help and a threat to "stay the fuck back" at the same time. He's the ultimate "coiled spring" who can only relate to others and find emotional release through extreme situations and behaviour, hence the ultra-violence and lines like, "But we don't do it for the money. It's the buzz, the rush, the fucking high!" [sorry, I forget the exact words] Even when Don's dying violently he continues to goad them, as though he's actually saying, "Is that all you got? More! Come one, give me MORE!"

Also, the other night I realised that Don's obsession with Jackie is probably more to do with his jealousy of Aitch as Gal's best friend. Don would probably dearly love to live life like Gal and Aitch, to be able to retire happilly in Spain and relax with a loved one and be accepted by others (etc), but he simply isn't capable:

"I didn't say you could be happy. Why should you be fucking happy?"
 
 
sleazenation
13:19 / 17.09.05
Ohhh yes I can definitely see Haitch having everything the Don wants - Haitch fits in with the other criminals in a way that Don never can - Haitch has the same sense of humour - Haitch has a nice bird - Jacqui, like all the criminals are meant to have and, more importantly he has Gal's love and friendship - something that Don desperately appears to crave -

I guess plays even more into Flyboy's reading... the film is about a a macho man's thwarted homosexual desire for a more feminine hetrosexual man.
 
 
Quantum
13:23 / 17.09.05
the way he gets thrown off the plane and then get's himself out of trouble with the airport police shows a chilling level of planning and foresight

Nah, I think totally the opposite. He's smoking a fag on the plane furious because reality hasn't conformed to his plan and reacts in a typical Don way when told to put it out ('I'll cut your fackin' hands off and use 'em as an ashtray') so gets in trouble, he's quick witted enough to think of a way out (accuses the flight attendant of groping him) and then goes back to Gals to reassert his dominance.

Although the rest of the film is really good, Kingsley is outstanding- notice how we all talk about Don and not the rabbit for example.
 
 
sleazenation
13:35 / 17.09.05
Don so rules the film that at the end, in Hell, even the devil rabbit can onlty raise a dismissive sneer from him.

And it's worth noting it is queer fear that Don exploits to get himself out of trouble at the airport...
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
14:56 / 17.09.05
Nah, I think totally the opposite. He's smoking a fag on the plane furious because reality hasn't conformed to his plan and reacts in a typical Don way when told to put it out ('I'll cut your fackin' hands off and use 'em as an ashtray') so gets in trouble, he's quick witted enough to think of a way out (accuses the flight attendant of groping him) and then goes back to Gals to reassert his dominance.

Hmmm....I'm in two minds about this. I think what got me the other night when I watched these scenes again was the way it all seemed so rehearsed on Don's part. For example, when he talks to the stewardess and says he's not going to put the fag out, he say's "Your move" which suggests he's already rehearsed this game in his head. Then, when he's in the police-interview room, I got the impression that the speech he gives to the inspector has also been previously played out and rehearsed in his mind (it's also the only time I can remember where he isn't looking another character directly in the eyes when he speeks). Indeed, he seems to automatically adopt a polite and official register when the inspector enters the room. e.g. (If my memory serves me correctly) saying words like "perturbed" instead "pissed off" when describing his own feelings about being felt up.

Hmm....dunno though. Of course, adopting such a register is exactly what he would do to simpy get out of trouble, so this may not suggest it's all part of a plan. But I guess my major thought was that he probably had plenty of time to plan his return to the villa in the cab-ride to the airport. Also, even a nutter like Don would have known whether he could smoke on the plane (come to think of, do we see Don smoking a fag at any other point in the movie? My memory says no, but it's often wrong, so..), and he doesn't look particularly and overtly stressed out or "in need of a fag" at the time.

But like I typed, I'm in two minds about this...

Although the rest of the film is really good, Kingsley is outstanding- notice how we all talk about Don and not the rabbit for example.

Kingsley definitely steals the show, but I am also always impressed by Ian McShane's performance, as it's probably the first time I've actually believed him in a role (I never was a fan of 'Lovejoy'). Indeed, in the past I always thought he brought a similar type of McShane smugness to every part he played, but in this film I forgot he was Ian "McShane the actor" and believed he was "Teddy, a man who will well and truly fuck anyone that dares to fuck him."
 
 
sleazenation
17:05 / 17.09.05
But Teddy is also ready to be fucked...
 
 
paranoidwriter waves hello
19:09 / 17.09.05
Indeed.
 
 
mondo a-go-go
15:27 / 21.09.05
And WTF is up with that rabbit, anyway?
 
 
sleazenation
15:41 / 21.09.05
I'm not sure the rabbit actually adds much to the film...

It appear three times from what I recall - in Gal's dream sequence where he is worried about his old life returning to haunt him, at the restaurant where Teddy all, but alls him a liar to his face and at the end inthe little joke/coda scene...

The deam sequence comes after a fantastically taut dinner scene that already conveys the menace of Don Logan and the old way of life...

The second comes as some extra sparkle to another already electrifying scene between Teddy and and Gal.

And the last is a coda - not strictly necessary for the film
 
 
grant
16:23 / 21.09.05
Isn't getting him back in the game more a statement of power and control than it is utility? Doesn't matter if he's useful or not - you don't get to walk away from those people.

Because they need you. I think that's the thing with this movie (and with the rabbit, for that matter). It seems to explore the emotional shapes beneath the old violent motifs. It's not that he knows too much to leave, or is too vital to the team to leave -- it's that he's married to them.

The rabbit is just their cuddly, snuggly side, all twisted by life underground.
 
  
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