Flawed cockney accents weaken otherwise stunning ‘Sexy Beast’

In theaters

SEXY BEAST. Directed by Jonathan Glazer, written by Louis Mellis and David Scinto. Running time: 91 minutes. Rated R.

The opening of Jonathan Glazer’s “Sexy Beast” is a stunner. In it, the camera hovers above Gal Dove (Ray Winstone), a doughy, 40-something English crook lying flat on his back in the heat of a blistering sun.

In spite of his burnt skin and unflatteringly tight Speedo, everything about Gal seems white-trash cool – right down to his chunky gold necklace, cheap silver rings and badly tipped hair.

But when a boulder steamrolls down the hill behind Gal’s swanky Spanish villa and becomes airborne, whizzing past his head before slamming into the bottom of his heart-tiled pool, it seems as if even nature knows that Gal’s cool is about to be tested in a deadly series of events.

With style and a pounding industrial score, Glazer, working from a screenplay by Louis Mellis and David Scinto, swings the meat of his movie around Gal’s relationship with Don Logan (Ben Kingsley), a psychopathic mobster from London who wants to pull Gal out of retirement for one last job.

But Gal wants none of it. Neither does his former porn star wife, Deedee (Amanda Redman), or their drinking friends, Aitch (Cavan Kendall) and Jackie (Julianne White), who are so oiled and leathery, they might as well be moving armoires.

Everyone involved shares a past with Logan, whose dirty mouth and violent, ugly mean streak are easy to fear and loathe. The result? Absolute fireworks – especially when Logan starts demanding that Gal join him on a frightfully well-conceived bank heist (ripped straight out of John Quested’s 1980 British film “Loophole”) with the debonair criminal, Teddy Bass (Ian McShane).

“Sexy Beast” is a good film that hasn’t traveled well; sometimes it’s impossible to decipher the strong cockney accents and, worse, if you don’t understand the local slang, well, it’s obvious you’re missing a good deal of the film.

Still, much like “The Limey” and “Croupier,” there’s enough here to intoxicate an American audience, particularly fans of Harold Pinter and David Mamet, who will respond to the film’s stagy scenes, icy chill and doubletalk.

The performances are uniformly excellent, particularly Kingsley’s Logan, who offers a spectacular twist on DeNiro’s Travis Bickle in “Taxi Driver,” and Winstone’s, who grounds the movie with a bearish presence that’s at once intimidating, exhilarating, and in the end, oddly comforting.

Grade: B+

On Video and DVD

THE WIDOW OF ST. PIERRE. Directed by Patrice Leconte, written by Claude Faraldo; in French with English subtitles. Running time: 112 minutes. Rated R.

In Patrice Leconte’s “The Widow of St. Pierre,” it’s 1849 and a murder has been committed against a man repeatedly stabbed for allegedly being too fat.

Now condemned to death via guillotine, the murderer, Neel Auguste (Emir Kusturica), who was stone drunk at the time of the murder, is faced with a peculiar situation: Since there are no guillotines or executioners in the foggy reaches of St. Pierre, a tiny French colony off the coast of Newfoundland, the now sober and deeply remorseful Auguste must sit in a holding cell for several months while St. Pierre’s brilliantly inept magistrates work to ship in the guillotine from Martinique – and find an executioner.

In the interim, Auguste meets a dashing couple who profoundly affect his life – Pauline (Juliette Binoche) and her husband, Jean (Daniel Auteuil), an army captain responsible for Auguste’s care until the time comes to do away with his head.

But as this curious trio comes to know one another – and as the blindly passionate and idealistic Pauline quietly builds community support for saving Auguste’s life – his value as a human being comes into question. Indeed, as Pauline sees it, every man is capable of good and evil. When they slip – even if that slip involves a cold-blooded murder – they’re nevertheless human and deserving of a second chance.

In light of recent events, renting a movie about a murderer’s redemption hardly seems fitting or worthwhile. So, in hindsight, it seems especially wise that Leconte doesn’t offer his own comment on Auguste or on Pauline’s choices; instead, he freely asks audiences to draw their own conclusions.

Working from a script by Claude Faraldo, Leconte is more interested in the growing tension between the townspeople who come to love Auguste and the magistrates ordered by law to kill him. Just as powerful – and perhaps more interesting – are the scenes shared by Binoche and Auteuil, two superb actors whose restraint become the soul of a movie rooted in irony.

Grade: A-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Tuesdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5” and Thursdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5:30” on WLBZ-2 and WCSH-6. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.