Bexy Seast

Okay, now, the first thing you have to know about this is that as I was walking home last night, knowing what movie we were about to watch, I made up this little tune, sort of a faux-bad-house-disco thing that went “[deep voice]Sexy Sexy…[high voice]Beast Beast!” To do it right, the second part sort of has a “whoo-oop – whoo-oop” quality which is really difficult to transcribe. I note this here because it is the sort of thing I have to deal with day in and day out: once I thought of this irritating song, I couldn’t get it out of my head. I am the kind of person who, in the absence of all media, would make up annoying jingles to torment myself.

But on to the film itself. This was just released on video, and after much regret that we’d missed it in theaters, Theresa and I snapped it up the moment it arrived in the store. Ben Kingsley as a psychopathic criminal in a small, cool-indie-ish heist drama: sign me up.

For starters, let me be clear that the much-lauded performance of Mr. Kingsley is indeed a fun little exercise in actorly charisma, a tightly wrapped dumpling of post-Mamet-Pinter tuffness. Ray Winstone, playing an ex-thief whom sun and lassitude have left the color and shape of a roast suckling pig, plays weakling to Kingsley’s force-of-nature brute. We wait nervously until Kingsley arrives on screen (his character, Don, is coming from England to Winstone’s Spanish hideaway to demand that Winstone return with him to England for a Big Job). Once he’s there, he blusters, bullies, stares down, rages, threatens, kicks, and punches until…well, until.

Through this whole sequence we come to understand the depth and nature of Winstone’s predicament: he’s a lucky man who has emerged from a vaguely sketched background of thieving – an escapee from a life he wasn’t strong enough to sustain any longer, which was going to break him rather than toughen him. His retirement is like that of a dope-addled drummer from a hedonistic 70’s band: the guy who would have O.D.’d or been killed in a bus crash if fate hadn’t washed him up on the beach, with enough money to dream away the rest of life.

Fair enough: we know, going in, that somehow Kingsley is going to get Winstone “back into the game,” and set up a high-pressure situation where some conflict of wills or final test will happen. And something like that – sort of – happens. I won’t include any spoilers here, but I’ll just note the following points:

1. On the one hand, I admired Jonathan Glaser for doing with restraint what Guy Ritchie does to obnoxious excess (indulge in indecipherable Cockney dialogue; use speed-ups, slow-downs and expressionistic camera tricks to add punch to otherwise familiar expository sequences); on the other hand, while Glaser lets the actors actually act instead of just look impressive, he has the same problem with using so many narrative shortcuts that it’s hard to give a damn about a single soul on the screen.
   
2. The homophobia/philia dynamic inherent in the relations between the principal men is interesting. It’s also undercooked.
   
3. The heist as detailed in the film makes no bloody sense at all.
   

As a rental, I still found it considerably more diverting than an evening of network television. I know that isn’t saying much. But it’s about as far as I’m prepared to go.

Posted by BT at March 14, 2002 05:16 PM