When I went to look up to see whether Jonathan Glazer's Sexy Beast was available on any of my streaming services, I came up with a funny result on Netflix.
(I'll waste some space here so when I paste the picture in, it will steer clear of the proper Sexy Beast poster and will not create a layout headache for me. You can't post a second picture too close to the first picture or else the text doesn't look right. Just trust me as I continue to type nonsense here that you can either read or not read, as you see fit. Discuss amongst yourselves. Here, I'll give you a topic: the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman.)
When you put that search term in Netflix, you get this amusing result:
What looks like an alien saying "Oh behave!" left me curious, for sure. But when I saw it was a TV show rather than a movie, I passed on the longer commitment and just satisfied myself with posting the picture here.
However, I did think there was about as much chance of me liking a TV show about naughty aliens as there was of me liking Glazer's 2001 feature debut, which stands out in stark contrast to Birth and Under the Skin, both of which I adore. I suspect I will also at least greatly respect, if not love (can you really love a film about the Holocaust?), The Zone of Interest, which doesn't release here until the 22nd of this month. In fact, I had considered holding this viewing back until after I'd seen it, but I decided to watch Sexy Beast first for two reasons: 1) February was ticking along and I needed to start watching movies for this, for Blaxploitaudient and for Flickchart Friends Favorites Fiesta, and 2) If I watched Zone of Interest and didn't like it, well then, Sexy Beast isn't really an outlier anymore because then I don't like half of the man's feature films.
(By the way, I looked up Sexy Beasts and it's a reality dating show where people don elaborate makeup to prevent appearances from being a major factor in determining their chemistry when they are on a first date. Interesting idea. Maybe I'll watch it after all. Rob Delaney is involved, which helps.)
Well, if the intention of this series is hopefully to find something in these films that I didn't find the first time, we're 0-1 so far.
The problem with Sexy Beast is what it was back in 2001: Don Logan.
It's a name that's supposed to strike fear into the hearts of men, and their women. In fact, that's what happens when Jackie (Julianne White) and Aitch (Cavan Kendall) show up at dinner with Gal (Ray Winstone) and Deedee (Amanda Redman), looking ashen, like presumably they've just had an argument about one of the many things couples argue about. Instead, it's that they got a call from London just before leaving their house, from someone wanting Gal to come back for "one last job."
So what? Gal seems to say. "I'm retired." Yep, we've already seen what Gal spends his time doing: baking in the Spanish sun as he lies, oiled up, by his pool.
"It was Don Logan."
Record scratch.
Now Gal looks like he's about to throw up.
The problem, then, is that when Don Logan shows up to make the offer in person -- an offer Gal can't refuse, I suppose -- he's Ben Kingsley playing a petulant baby given to stomping his feet and throwing temper tantrums.
Now, I should pause here to say that there are lots of different ways a character who's supposed to be frightening can be frightening. The only truly menacing character in this film, Ian McShane as Teddy, comes by this by never blinking, and by letting the silences turn his conversational opponent into a quaking puddle of nerves. In fact, I'd like to have seen this movie with McShane as Don Logan.
Kingsley? He stomps his feet and throws temper tantrums like a petulant baby.
Not menacing. Never was.
And because of the odd structure of Glazer's film, we have to watch this behavior for about 50 minutes of an 88-minute movie. Or at least, up until the 50-minute mark, starting maybe at the 20-minute mark.
A menacing character should barely need to lift a finger to accomplish his goals. If there is a threat about what a character will do to you, you shouldn't be able to turn him down a dozen times, and actually force him to head to the airport without knowing whether you're actually going to do the job he wants you to do. And the fact that you look extremely scared while repeatedly rejecting him just makes it all the more of a disconnect. If you are scared of someone, you don't reject their request even once.
Because of the way Kingsley plays Don Logan and the way Glazer asks him to play Don Logan, I immediately lose all my bearings of what Glazer wants to convey about this world. It would seem Glazer is showing us that a gangster can never really be retired, because there is always someone trying to pull you back in -- someone who holds something over you that compels you to be pulled back in. Glazer presents two different metaphors for this in the film, one a massive boulder that rolls down the side of the hill and lands in Gal's pool, nearly hitting him (which would have killed him), and one a six-foot rabbit-like creature that looks like it has been chewed up and spat out, who shows up in Gal's dreams as sort of a grim reaper figure with a gun. (In fact, I was thinking about how when this came out in 2001, it was the same year as the six-foot rabbit in Donnie Darko.)
His non-metaphorical version of the idea that you can never really retire? It's a petulant baby yelling "No no no no no no!," whose big transgressive act is to pee on Gal's carpeted bathroom floor.
There is what I would call a fairly useful 25-minute stretch at the end of Sexy Beast that features the job in question -- in which Gal does participate, but not under the conditions Logan would have wanted. It's got a lot of McShane, who is great, and it's an interesting set piece for a robbery, as it involves safety deposit boxes and men in scuba gear. There are also some techniques in here that preview some of the camera movements and editing we'd see later from Glazer, specifically in Under the Skin.
But even this portion of the film feels like a weird footnote, after Glazer had already chosen to spend way too much time on Don Logan, including an odd tangent where Logan refuses to put out his cigarette on a plane, is taken to be questioned, then accuses a male flight attendant of groping him. It's only because of this episode that he remains in Spain at all.
And even this portion contains some narrative bits that don't make any sense or are unexplained, like how they pull off a heist involving scuba gear while remaining essentially unnoticed, and like why Teddy does a certain thing he does to a certain character who hasn't come into the story before now. (Don't need to go into spoiler territory as such.)
One thing I appreciate about Birth and Under the Skin is how Glazer does not feel as though he needs to explain everything that's happening. But in the genres those films are in, that's much easier. In a film that is effectively a descendent of the Tarantino style -- a milieu in which Glazer probably doesn't naturally see himself -- plot and narrative connectivity are far more important. You might say a heist film, which this is for its last third, demands that sort of logistical clarity even more, just so we understand the stakes of the heist and have an idea what failure would look like.
I started this piece with a funny picture of a TV series with a similar title. As I was looking up Sexy Beast on IMDB to get some of the names of the actors, I found another TV series with the same title -- and based on the same characters. That's right, only two weeks ago, what would appear to be a prequel to the movie Sexy Beast began airing as a TV show, with the same characters as younger men.
I just don't understand this. Whatever any individual viewer may get out of this movie, I can hardly see how it can be viewed as a cohesive whole. Mileage may vary on the individual components -- I happen to not really like any of them -- but as a complete unit, Sexy Beast is a first film showing some promise in its very kindest interpretation.
I just don't think Glazer thinks of himself as this kind of filmmaker. There's a reason he didn't try to become England's next Guy Ritchie or Matthew Vaughn. He had bigger things on his mind, and I think he would consider this a career outlier too.
And now that I have seen Sexy Beast twice, I'm glad I don't ever have to see it again.
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