Sexy Beast (2000) on Netflix
Retired safecracker Gal Dove lives quietly in a Spanish villa with his wife DeeDee. Don Logan, a gangster from Gal's old life, arrives to press him into a London robbery.
- Netflix4.1/5
- IMDb7.3/1076,974 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes87%
Trailer
Plot summary
Gal Dove, once a safecracker, has served his time and retired to a villa on the Costa del Sol, where he lives with his wife DeeDee and with Aitch and Jackie, their married friends. A boulder crashes onto the poolside and narrowly misses him. Then Don Logan, a feared associate from Gal's criminal past, turns up. Don wants Gal to take part in a bank vault robbery in London, arranged by the crime lord Teddy Bass, who learned of the vault from the bank's chairman, Harry. Gal refuses. Don keeps pressing, and his aggression grows, involving everyone at the villa. Gal is also troubled by dreams of a menacing beast.
Cast
- Enrique Alemán Fabregaas Pilot
Show all 20 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Sexy Beast (2000)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Insurance on the film was hard to get, and when the American studio bought it the legal department said "You cannot make this", counting something like 300 uses of the word "cunt" and 400 "fucks", yet it passed censorship and got out there.
- To play retired criminal Gal Dove, Ray Winstone spent two weeks in Spain before filming deliberately tanning and overeating to bulk up, later calling it "the best rehearsal time I've ever had in my life".
- Ben Kingsley won Best Supporting Actor awards from critics' groups from Boston to Toronto, but lost the Screen Actors Guild Award to Ian McKellen for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and both the Golden Globe and the Academy Award to Jim Broadbent for Iris.
- Singer Brian Sella said his band The Front Bottoms took its name from a line spoken by Ben Kingsley in the film, and another Kingsley line inspired The Kooks' song "Jackie Big Tits".
- According to Scinto, Sexy Beast began as an incomplete stage play called Gangster No. 2, part of a trilogy whose writers named their pieces like paintings: Francis Bacon as a reference for Gangster No. 1, Hockney for Sexy Beast and Magritte for 44 Inch Chest.
- Sexy Beast was shot in London and Agua Amarga, Spain in the summer of 1999, and Ray Winstone had originally been considered for the role of Don, along with Anthony Hopkins.
- Sexy Beast was the final film to feature Cavan Kendall, who died of cancer shortly after filming ended; a prequel television series, also called Sexy Beast, premiered in 2024.
