Vicious gangsters are virtually a cinematic institution. Beginning with the 1930’s, cinema goers got to see what life on the streets was really like with hard hitting crime sagas that struck a nerve with audiences. In 1931, a double shotgun blast of mobsters busted onto big screens with James Cagney’s Tom Powers in Public Enemy and Edward G. Robinson legendary Rico in Little Caesar. Both were power hungry maniacs who murdered their way to the top, only to be cut down. In 1932, Paul Muni played Antonio Camonte in Howard Hawks’ original Scarface. A pseudo representation of Al Capone, Muni made Camonte a violent thug, who meets a gruesome end at the hands of justice.
For Capone himself, imdb.com has 47 listings of actors playing the infamous gangster over the years. My favorite Capone’s include Rod Steiger in 1959’s Al Capone, Jason Robard’s over the top crime boss in 1967’s The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and Robert DeNiro’s bat-wielding skull crusher in Brian DePalma’s The Untouchables. These guys don’t even come close to being the screen’s most malicious gangsters though.
It takes around fifteen gunmen to take down James Caan’s Sonny Corleone in The Godfather, but not before Caan establishes his character a manic energy, as if he could rip your head off at any time. Joe Pesci has made a name for himself by playing homicidal maniacs in mafia epics for Martin Scorsese. Pesci won the Oscar for his butcher knife brandishing Tommy DeVito in 1990’s Goodfellas and then went on to use a vice to torture rival mobsters in Casino in ’95. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. One could also mention countless gangsters played by Robert DeNiro, Christopher Walken, and others.
All over the world, cinemagoers have had their own gangsters to root for. In Hong Kong, Chow Yun Fat was so charismatic in John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow, they brought him back for the sequel, even though he had been killed off in the series’ first installment. Bunta Sugawara came back five times to play hard boiled gangster Shozo Hirono in Kinji Fukasaku’s epic Yakuza Papers series where he constantly has to fight for his life using guns, knives and even wooden swords.
Across the pond, Britain has maintained its own legacy of barbarous cockney villains. Michael Caine’s Jack Carter in the original Get Carter makes Stallone’s version look like a choirboy by comparison. Bob Hoskins has never been more vicious than he was as Harold Shand in The Long Good Friday. His crime boss is one of the only cinematic characters to successfully kill a person using nothing more than a broken bottle. In recent years, Soccer player Vinnie Jones brought his real life fury to the screen as the head smashing Big Chris in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Bullet Tooth Tony in Snatch.
Probably the most savage portrayal of a gangster to hit screens in the last few years was from a man you would not expect at all. Ben Kingsley, the star of Ghandi, who would after go on to play the meek accountant in Schindler’s List and Dr. Watson in Without a Clue, would show us a side of himself that had never come out on screen before, and will maybe never be seen again.
Sexy Beast Starring Ben Kingsley, Ray Winstone, Ian McShane, and Amanda Redman. Directed by Jonathan Glazer.
This was the first film by Director Jonathan Glazer, but you wouldn’t know it to watch Sexy Beast. This is a surefooted, confident picture that contains as much flash as a Guy Ritchie flick, but has way more substance. Take for instance the opening sequence of the film. We see Ray Winstone’s Gary “Gal” Dove lying by a pool. He’s a former gangster, retired and living the good life in Spain. He’s tanned, relaxed and gotten lazy while enjoying his secluded home and his small group of friends. Then, even before the film’s opening credits, he’s nearly crushed by a boulder. This is an omen that Gal takes quite lightly until another irresistible force shows up.
It is in this early portion of the film that Glazer and Screenwriters Louis Mellis and David Scinto take great pains to really establish Gal’s new found paradise. His gangster life is gone and now he has built himself a real family of friends. A BBQ at his house is filled with hallucinatory images of love between Gal and his wife Deedee (Amanda Redman). My favorite is a long shot of the two in an underwater embrace. The weightlessness in this shot shows Gal is free from worry and thinking only of his love for Deedee and their life away from crime.
I also love Winstone’s inner monologue here. This is a man who has tried desperately to shed his past and it comes out is Winstone’s cool line readings.
For example…
People say, “Don’t you miss it, Gal?” I say, “What, England? Nah. F#cking place. It’s a dump. Don’t make me laugh. Grey, grimy, sooty. What a $#!t hole. What a toilet. Every c#nt with a long face shuffling about, moaning, all worried. No thanks, not for me.” They say, “What’s it like, then, Spain?” And I’ll say, “It’s hot. Hot. Oh, it’s f#cking hot. Too hot? Not for me, I love it.”
Unfortunately, the boulder returns to wreck paradise again in the form of Don Logan. The mention of his name makes all their faces grim. He’s a force of nature, coming to destroy Gal’s private Eden by taking him back to world he’s forsaken. You would almost think there was no way Don could live up to his ominous reputation, but you would be dead wrong.
Even though he has won the Oscar and been nominated several times, the energy Kingsley puts into Logan is still a revelation. He’s like a coiled snake, ready to strike at any moment, making all around him fearful to be even in his presence. The scenes together with Winstone are amazing to watch as Kingsley’s a man of much smaller stature, and yet his presence is so enormous that he dwarfs his screen partner. Winstone, normally the heavy in this type of picture, gives a great portrayal of a man gone soft. Gal cowers away from Don, trying to carefully tell the gangster that he’s not interested in “one last job”. Don does not take the news lightly.
Don constantly berates the gentle Gal, constantly cursing at him, interrupting him and putting him off kilter, destroying his confidence as much as possible to get his way.
Shut up, c%nt. You louse. You got some f#ckin’ neck ain’t you. Retired? F#ck off, you’re revolting. Look at your suntan, it’s leather, it’s like leather man, your skin. We could make a f#cking suitcase out of you. Like a crocodile, fat crocodile, fat bastard. You look like f#cking Idi Amin, you know what I mean? Stay here? You should be ashamed of yourself. Who do you think you are? King of the castle? Cock of the walk?
Kingsley is rabid here, even striking Gal every so often to get his point across. All of this, Gal takes with a whimpering dignity. Desperately not wanting to offend Don, but still wanting to decline his offer.
Amazingly enough, Kingsley still manages to find small moments of humanity in this character. In a recent interview, the actor states he imagined Don actually having been abused as a child, so as to give him a reason for his current behavior. This is very apparent in a scene where Logan abuses a flight attendant, only to turn the situation when confronted by airline officials, making it look like he’s been sexually harassed by a steward. The scene is magnificent as if Logan reaches deep down into his own psyche to produce a complete lie that he adds some truth to.
Kingsley even has moments where Don lets his guard down to get sympathy from Gal. Mostly, this has to do with a one night stand Don had with Julianne White’s Jackie, the wife of Gal’s best friend. The moments are odd, and even sad, making us feel temporarily sorry for Logan, only to hate and fear him even more when Don doesn’t get the reaction he was wanting from Gal. Imagine the scariest child ever having a fit when he doesn’t get his way, only this child is one of the fiercest men you have ever seen.
Again it’s Glazer who helps bring this film home. He puts together one scene of bravado after another, using wonderful visual metaphor and clever editing. A recurring dream Gal has keeps bringing back a giant rabbit/man with an Uzi who’s trying to kill him as he eats. The scene where Don relays the heist plan is incredible as it’s a flashback within a flashback. Don gives Gal the goods on Jimmy (Andy Lucas), who relays the plan to Don by Teddy Bass (Ian McShane) to rob an impregnable bank. These scenes show Don in his own element in London, elegant, but not too flashy. He’s a dutiful soldier to those above him. The scene is a masterful use of style.
Other sequences are much more subtle, yet just as powerful. As Don scolds Gal for not giving in to his offer, he starts in on Deedee’s past, as she’s an ex porn star. The camera cuts to Deedee still in bed upstairs. Ever so slightly the shot shifts, showing Deedee alone in bed, a great precipice without Gal next to her, giving her strength and happiness.
Gal does eventually do the job, but not for the reason you’d think. The heist itself is surreal, as Don’s team of men takes advantage of a Turkish bath next to the adjoining bank. Weightlessness comes into view again as these gangster find their hopes and dreams within the now watery vault.
This last portion of the film relies heavily on Ian McShane as Teddy, the boss of bosses. McShane’s screen charisma encompasses nearly every scene he’s in, making him terrifying without him having to say much at all. He’s the last in a line of some of the hardest screen gangster ever put in one movie.
As I’d said before, this Sexy Beast has as much of a frenzied style as Guy Ritchie’s Cockney flicks, but is loaded with much more cinematic weight. The film is a marriage of a very talented director and a myriad of great actors, stretching their screen personas. It makes you wonder whether the film would be as good if Winstone and Kingsley had played to type, making the smaller man the meek Dove, instead of the rabid dog he is here. At any rate, Sexy Beast is an amazingly rich experience and one that should be loved by Gangster film aficionados everywhere.
