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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 43.57%
Worth A Look: 25.71%
Average: 15.71%
Pretty Bad: 4.29%
Total Crap: 10.71%
6 reviews, 104 user ratings
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| Sexy Beast |
by Greg Muskewitz
"A beast of a burden."
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I finally got around to catching “Sexy Beast” late last week. The verdict? I would have been better off skipping it altogether.A very British black comedy with a deceptive cover of a caper movie (the actual caper is but a wrinkle near the end) about one gangster (Ben Kingsley) who has come to retrieve a retired gangster (Ray Winstone) in his happily married life with ex-porn star wife in the Costa del Sol. A sort of battle of the wills — back and forth, back and forth, etc. — a bantering set of dialogues of whether or not the retired gangster will accompany him back. It gets violent near the third act, told partially in flashback by images, but it is still a dull topping to a dull main dish. One setback here, maybe the most recognizable locally, is the thick accents in which the characters speak. “Sexy Beast” is one of those movies that would have benefited from having the subtitles, particularly since it is such a talkie, dialogue driven movie. Early on, once the unliked gangster has made his way over, there are a couple of funny scenarios during the arguments, but never throughout and never for long. All too soon, the humor derived from the bickering runs out of driving force. There’s been some fuss made of Kingsley’s role, and it is different from anything I’ve seen him do before, but it still isn’t enough to permute the movie to another level, a better level. I’ve been asked whether his role would be considered leading or supporting by several people before I happened to see this, but now that I have, my answer would be supporting. I was more impressed with Winstone, whose praise has been shadowed by Kingsley’s. Jonathan Glazer is another “pop music director” alumni (I hear his Radiohead videos are good) making his debut, but of those alumni that I have seen over the course of the last year, Glazer’s is the weakest. He cannot be blamed of overstylizing the movie — it was pretty much gimmick free, but released itself of too many responsibilities. As a comedy, it lacks. As a caper movie, it lacks. As a character study, it is inept and inadequate. It seems like its concerns are somewhere else, and those efforts are not seen. At one point, the “boulder” starts rolling, but it’s never kept in that forward-motion.Final Verdict: D-.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=4490&reviewer=172
originally posted: 07/28/01 07:47:25
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USA
13-Jun-2001 (R)
UK
N/A
Australia
16-Aug-2001 (MA)
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