Picture an aging criminal coaxed out of retirement, sketch in a sexy wife/girlfriend and a gangland associate who pressures our aging anti-hero into one last gig. Add some darkly comic touches, a little romance, a suspenseful robbery and a twisty plot booby-trapped with betrayals and you have the ingredients for three films, all released within months of each other.
Sexy Beast (Rated 18A Playing Time: 88 mins. )
Retired safecracker Gal Evans (Ray Winstone) is relaxing in the Spanish sun, unaware that a boulder is hurtling down the hill and heading straight for the pool. Its an apt metaphor. The good life Gal has been sharing with wife Deedee (Amanda Redstone) is about to be placed in jeopardy as psychotic thug Don Logan (Sir Ben Kingsley) shows up on the scene, determined to lure Gal back to London for "one last big job." Like that boulder, Logan is an implacable force of nature and that is the way Kingsley plays him. Trust me. You'll never think of Sir Ben in connection with Gandhi again after you see his killer performance in this film. With its wire taut suspense, smart screenplay and an ingeniously filmed underwater robbery sequence this is a lean and mean slice of hard-boiled British noir directed by Jonathan Glazer from a screenplay by Louis Mellis and David Scinto.
The Score (14A 122 mins.)
All Nick Wells (Robert de Niro) wants to do is spend some quality time with his girlfriend (Angela Bassett) and run his Montreal based jazz club. Wouldn’t ya know it? His old pal, Max (Marlon Brando) talks him into one last job. Unfortunately for Nick, he will have to work with Jack (Edward Norton), an edgy young thief who thinks he knows it all.
Except for the cast, the film, directed by Frank Oz from a screenplay credited to Kario Salem, Lem Dobbs and Scott Marshall Smith (from a story by Salem and Daniel E. Taylor) has nothing to set it apart.
De Niro and Brando play off each other like cool jazz pros while the volatile Norton tries to stir up the mix.
Heist (18A 111 mins.)
All Joe Moore (Gene Hackman) wants to do is sail off into the sunset with his foxy young wife, Fran (Rebecca Pidgeon). His retirement plans are put on hold when Bergman (Danny de Vito), his neighborhood fence, stiffs him on a debt and Joe is forced to pull - you guessed it - one last job. Nick is also pressured into hiring Bergman`s nephew, Jimmy Silk (Sam Rockwell). Naturally, the kid is a hothead. His lack of experience threatens to gum up the whole operation.
David Mamet wrote and directed and his fingerprints are all over this thing. The characters talk in terse sentences that explode on impact. It`s all very cool and stylized in a story that begs for Elmore Leonard`s earthy touch. The script is wound up tight as a top but, unlike Mamet cult faves such as House of Games and The Spanish Prisoner, this one doesn‘t know when to stop spinning. Hackman is tough as nails and Ms. Pidgeon (Mrs. David Mamet in real life) has the kind of eyes made for deception. The robbery sequence is crisply filmed and suspenseful. However, the screenplay`s lack of credulity seriously undermines the gritty atmosphere the film works so hard to build.
Richard Goertz - Richard Goertz has a Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in English and History acquired light years ago (when his hair was longer) and have ...
