Anyone buy Sexy Beast (1 Viewer)

[josh4040]

I want some convincing to pick it up. It got good reviews from the dvd review sites but how bout the average joe?

thanks

 

[Jeremy Anderson]

Ben Kingsley's performance is brilliant. Definitely Oscar-worthy. That being said, I thought the movie was way too slow. Let's break the movie down:

Out of an 89 minute runtime:

20 minutes of character introduction.

28 minutes of Kingsley convincing Winstone to "do the job."

3 minutes of "What happened to Kingsley?"

18 minutes of them actually doing the job, which isn't horribly interesting.

17 minutes of more "What happened to Kingsley?" which, when revealed, isn't horribly interesting.

3 minutes of credits.

This is one that COULD have been an interesting movie if a little more work had gone into the story arc. There are, however, some really good performances and some excellent camera work.

To further explain my view, here's a quick cut'n'paste of my short review of this disc:

Ben Kingsley deserved the Oscar nod for his role as Don Logan - hardass abrasive cockney gangster. But outside of that, this movie was rather pedestrian as far as crime thrillers go. In an 89 minute movie, we spend 20 minutes meeting the main characters (none of whom are particularly likable), then another 28 minutes of Kingsley's character trying to convince the lead to participate in the robbery they're planning. You do get treated to a nice scene where Kingsley's character lights up a cigarette on an airplane and is summarily removed, but other than that there's a lot of dead weight here. By the time we get to the heist itself and the mediocre payoff of the movie, it really isn't important. Were it not for Kingsley's supporting role, this movie would have fallen apart completely. There is, however, some very interesting and stylistic camera work... but that doesn't make up for all the old men in bikini briefs you have to sit through. As much as I loved Kingsley's performance, this one's going in the FOR SALE pile with the equally horrible Soul Survivors.

Video quality is decent, but not great. The print used here has quite a number of flaws and looks very amateurish. The transfer is okay, but the source material is pretty weak. Audio is surprisingly full for a movie like this, but still not a very professional sounding mix. It's almost as if fidelity is pinched off somehow, as each channel sounds like it came from analogue casette tape. You get a commentary track, some EPK stuff and a bunch of trailers for movies that looked more interesting than this (including WAKING LIFE, which looks really good!).

MOVIE: 2/10

VIDEO: 4/10

AUDIO: 6/10

EXTRAS: 4/10

 

[PhilipG]

Josh,
From your DVD Profiler listing I see that we share similar tastes in movies - I own about 95% of your list in my 500+ strong collection, although I also have many more older films in addition.
I thoroughly enjoyed Sexy Beast. The direction, script and performances are all there. You could certainly do a lot worse with your money. I have the DVD on order, and can't wait for it to arrive.
However, I don't see many non US-films in your list. So you may not be able to get into Sexy Beast purely from an accent perspective (apparently Americans find the Cockney accent difficult - I presume you are American...?). How did you cope with the accents in Snatch? SB differs greatly from Snatch in style (SB is more intelligent, less in-your-face), but I enjoyed both of these Brit-flicks.
Finally, what Jeremy calls slow, I call well-paced.

 

[Jeremy Anderson]

I just think you could have cut 15 minutes of the beginning and added time to the end and had a far tighter and more interesting movie. The movie is absolutely at a standstill until Ben Kingsley hits the screen, and they should have brought him into the picture much earlier. I also think we could have used a bit more of the crazy gun-toting man-rabbit dream sequences. I'm sure people will respectfully disagree with my review of the movie, but that's just how I see it!

 

[Brajesh Upadhyay]

Terrific flick - worth a rental only IMO. It isn't the kind of flick you'd want to watch too many times.