One of the enduring popular genres in modern cinema is the heist film. The list of great films coming out of this genre is lengthy and covers every time period and cultural setting imaginable. The genre more or less got its start in the 1950s starting with films including John Huston’s “The Asphalt Jungle,” then Britain’s “The Lavender Hill Mob” and “The Lady Killers,” Stanley Kubrick’s “The Killing,” and France’s “Rififi.”
More recently, we have had the pleasure of watching such …
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One of the enduring popular genres in modern cinema is the heist film. The list of great films coming out of this genre is lengthy and covers every time period and cultural setting imaginable. The genre more or less got its start in the 1950s starting with films including John Huston’s “The Asphalt Jungle,” then Britain’s “The Lavender Hill Mob” and “The Lady Killers,” Stanley Kubrick’s “The Killing,” and France’s “Rififi.”
More recently, we have had the pleasure of watching such films as “Out of Sight,” “The Usual Suspects,” “Reservoir Dogs,” The Oceans series and “Fantastic Mr. Fox.” Some of the basic rules of the genre are that we are typically given a team of a few “experts" (safe crackers, getaway men, masters of disguise, the muscle, etc,) led by some charismatic mastermind bent on completing a near impossible task. These set-ups reward us with the interpersonal trials and tribulations of the characters coupled with the pleasure of following the swiss watch precision used to pull off capers (or the bumblings that derail them).
“Sexy Beast,” showing Tuesday at Woodmere, certainly falls within the tradition, but it is a different kind of movie with a novel take on the genre. I think of it as a cockney fairytale, a heist hallucination, a despoiler’s dream. Unlike the typical heist movie, we are given no background information on any of the characters except for our two main protagonists. Other than those characters and the “mastermind,” who only appears in a few scenes, we are not even offered an ounce of dialogue from the members of the heist team. We see them only in fleeting shots, and when we do see them carousing or running around at the scene of the crime doing we-know-not-what, we are confronted with a group of loud middle-aged men – not exactly the kind of talent you would expect.
The team’s job itself is ludicrously difficult. They must break into an ultra-secure safe deposit facility owned by a company named Imperial Emblatt, by drilling through the wall of a bathhouse swimming pool and scuba diving into the facility to steal whatever is in the safe boxes.
What we are given instead is a glimpse through a dark window upon a strange and unfamiliar dream world. The film’s setting in Spain’s Costa Del Sol region represents a place like Avalon, where King Arthur was taken to recover from his wounds after fighting Mordred at his final Battle at Camlann; a crooked and twisted land representative of the perennially rain-drenched Cockney London. The lack of information about these places paradoxically heightens our sense of wonderment and allows us to focus on the battle royale between our two protagonists, who spar like two gods or kings representing opposite worlds.
The main protagonists are Gal Dove (Ray Winstone), a one-time associate of those guys back in London. Gal, we find out, has served nine years in prison and wants out of “the life.” As the film opens, we find Gal roasting under the sun next to his swimming pool at his hacienda on the Costa Del Sol (known in the vernacular as the Cockney Riviera). Almost immediately, his dream world is interrupted by two events. The first is a near miss from a huge boulder tumbling down the mountain and landing in his swimming pool, a harbinger of things to come. The second is a visit from an old associate – the psychopathic Don Logan (Ben Kingsley).
Logan has been recruited by Teddy Bass, the “mastermind” (Ian McShane), to compel Gal to do one more job. The scenario reads more like a plot device from “Game of Thrones" than it does a heist movie. The motivations of these people have more to do with clan loyalty, saving face and the perceived challenge of the task at hand than making a quick score. As Don says, “it’s the charge, it’s the bolt, it’s the buzz, it’s the sheer F____ offness of it all; am I right?” Otherwise, it’s hard to guess why Teddy would want Gal involved. We are never given an inkling as to Gal’s expertise and he clearly does not seem to be in any sort of physical shape to carry out this sort of work anymore.
But what we do get for the majority of the film’s running time is the sharp dialogue and interaction between Don and Gal and, to a lesser extent, the few people who serve as his entourage and protectors. And the dialogue is priceless. I have never heard such inventive rapid fire cockney banter. Needless to say, reading the closed captions is somewhat of a necessity.
Like other movies from the fantasy genre, we are given numerous dream sequences ranging from visions of Gal’s wife Deedee seen through the eye of a heart-shaped cigar smoke ring to visions of giant rabbits touting automatic weapons. The movie ends with such a scene. Like a wonderful fairytale, do we get a happy ending? I won’t give it away, but it wraps up nicely. You’ll just have to see it for yourself.
“Sexy Beast” will be showing at 7 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 21, as part of the Chestnut Hill Film Group’s Tuesday Nights at the Movies program at Woodmere, 9201 Germantown Ave. The screening is free, but contributions are welcome.