Sexy Beast is a 2000 British film directed by Jonathan Glazer, starring Ray Winstone, Ben Kingsley and Ian McShane. Produced by Jeremy Thomas, it was Glazer's debut feature film. He had previously been a director of music videos, such as Rabbit in Your Headlights for British electronica group UNKLE, and commercials for companies such as Guinness and Levi.
The film earned Kingsley an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. In 2004 the magazine Total Film named Sexy Beast the 15th greatest British film of all time.
The film is rated 18 by the BBFC for Very Strong Language, Strong Bloody Violence, Strong Sex and Sex References.
Ex-con and expert safe-cracker Gary "Gal" Dove has served his time behind bars and blissfully retired to a Spanish villa with his beloved wife Deedee. He also has the company of longtime friend Aitch and his wife Jackie. Their idyll is shattered, however, by the arrival of an old criminal associate, the sociopathic Don Logan, who is intent on enlisting Gal in a bank heist back in London.
Dove politely but firmly refuses Logan's many requests to join the heist, but Logan will not back down. After revealing a lingering infatuation with Jackie, he makes several unwelcome attempts at reconnecting with her. Logan eventually grows violent, hurling torrents of abuse at the group while at the same time spitefully painting himself as a victim of their infidelity. After finally storming away in a rage, Logan is kicked off his plane and returns to Dove's home with the intention of murdering him. Instead, Deedee surprises him with a shotgun. The entire group combines their efforts, first beating and shooting him, and finally crushing his skull.
With Logan dead, Dove is forced to return to London to perform the job as if nothing has happened. Teddy Bass, a powerful crimelord, has organised the heist after learning about the bank from Harry, a banker who had sex with him at an orgy. Dove feigns ignorance over Logan's whereabouts, but Bass is immediately suspicious. Dove now fears both getting arrested by the police and being murdered by Bass. Since Logan's arrival, Dove's anxiety has manifested in strange dreams where he is menaced by a humanoid rabbit, which echoes a disastrous hunting trip earlier in the film.
During the heist, Bass' gangsters use surface-supplied diving gear and drill into Harry's bank vault from a pool in a neighboring bath house. The water from the pool floods the vault and shorts its security system. While helping to empty the vault's safe deposit boxes, Dove secretly pockets a pair of large diamond earrings. After the job is successfully completed, Bass forces Dove to accompany him to kill Harry. Though Bass has realised the truth about Logan's murder, he does not care enough to retaliate by killing Dove. Instead, he forces Dove to forfeit his share of the loot and banishes him from London.
Dove returns safely home and his paradise is restored. Deedee wears the diamond earrings that he stole, and it is revealed that Logan is buried under the double-heart insignia at the bottom of their pool, which had been damaged by a falling boulder just prior to his arrival.
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