Sexy beast

R.I.P. Terence Stamp, of The Limey (1999). In his honor – more or less – I’m watching another fine movie about aging, expatriated, English gangsters: Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast (2000), starring Ray Winstone and Ben Kingsley (not Terence Stamp). I don’t know why it’s called “Sexy Beast.” This is my third viewing. Once each decade is about right. Winstone is Gal, a genial gangster who has retired with his woman to a villa in Spain. He stretches out beside his pool, drinks his beer, and roasts. Or he potters around the countryside with another retiree and an errand-boy, shooting at rabbits. It’s a good life. There’s the occasional hiccup. A boulder rolls down a hill, almost kills Gal, and wrecks the bottom of his pool. Worse, Don – Kingsley – arrives from England to browbeat Gal into going back for a final robbery. (Gal is a safecracker or some such technician – I don’t quite remember; I haven’t reached the “heist” scene yet; I watch in installments, late at night.) Don is a honey badger. Or a demon. Gal dreams about Satan the night he finds out that Don is coming to Spain. The longest section of the movie shows Gal enduring Don’s relentless abuse. You’d think this would make for lousy viewing, but it doesn’t. Everything about this movie is entertaining. It wouldn’t be so much fun set in a dark den in East London, but this is Spain, specifically the sunlit, garish, hallucinatory, Mediterranean coast: the backdrop for such varied screen oddities as Morvern Callar and Benidorm: a place where pasty Britons flock to party or lie low or simply turn beet-red. That Gal has opted for the good life is an affront to Don’s frenetic code. It’s amusing that someone as nasty as Don should follow a code; but, does he ever.