If the Oscars had a category for Best Opening Scene, Sexy Beast might be a lock for a nomination next year.  The film begins with a slightly overweight man sporting both a nice tan and a very tiny bathing suit catching rays next to an in-ground swimming pool at a villa in an isolated, rocky area of Spain's Costa del Sol.  Before you know it, a giant boulder comes bouncing down the hill like the cannonball in The Breeders' video (it's set to the Stranglers' "Peaches") and heads right for the relaxed, unsuspecting man and his ostensibly picture-perfect life.

The man is Gary "Gal" Dove (Ray Winstone, The War Zone), a former London thug who retired to a life of leisure on the coast of Spain.  In addition to the beautiful hacienda, he has a hot, ex-porn star wife named Deedee (Amanda Redman) and maintains a close relationship with one of his former cohorts, Aitch (Cavan Kendall), and his wife, Jackie (Julianne White).  While the boulder misses Gal, it signals the beginning of the end of the good times to which he has grown accustomed.

At a post-boulder-attack dinner, Aitch gives Gal some bad news – their psychotic former boss is on his way to Costa del Sol to rope Gal into spearheading an intricate robbery back in London.  You can practically see the tension well up in Gal when he gets the news, and the dinner party begins to act like somebody has just died.  They barely even speak the man's name, and when Malky (Ben Kingsley, Rules of Engagement) finally arrives, the anxiety at the villa can be cut with a knife.

It takes nearly 30 minutes for Malky to appear in the film, but when he does, he hits the screen like a Category 5 hurricane pummeling a Florida trailer park.  With steady support from his wife and friends, Gal feebly tries to fend off Malky's intimidating demands by insisting that he is retired from the criminal life.  But the bald, brash and bullying Malky simply won't take no for an answer, drawing Gal back into the life he abandoned and setting off a devastating string of crazy events highlighted by a series of Gal's paranoid, monster-plagued nightmares.

The idea of a former gangster getting pulled back into The Life may remind you a bit of The Crew, but where that film emphasized slapstick comedy over criminal capers, Beast's tone is much more serious.  There are numerous laughs, but they're all firmly rooted in black comedy, as opposed to bladder and Geritol jokes.  Essentially, Beast is a showcase for two terrific performances from Winstone and Kingsley.  The former rarely gets a chance to act this befuddled, while the latter creates one of the more memorable bad guys in recent memory with just one look from his cold, steely eyes.  And, if you're familiar with Winstone's career, you know that he and anal rape scenes go hand in hand.

Beast is the big-screen directorial debut of Jonathan Glazer, who has created some wildly popular commercials in the U.K. for Guinness beer, as well as music videos for Radiohead, Massive Attack, and the award-winning "Virtual Insanity" for Jamiroquai.  Glazer is a promising talent with a keen eye for pleasing visuals, but hasn't really made a completely successful jump from videos and commercials to full-length features, at least when it comes to telling a story.  Beast is, at times, quite unevenly paced - a fact that could be attributed to the film's writing duo (debut screenwriter David Scinto and Nuns on the Run's Louis Mellis) before fingers start pointing at Glazer.  With acting this solid, the pacing is a pretty minor complaint.

1:24 –

for strong adult language, graphic violence, nudity and strong sexual content, including rape