Sexy Beast

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

An extraordinary and original creation. It belongs alongside "Amores Perros" and "Memento" on a shortlist of 2001's most exciting revelations.

San Francisco Chronicle Wesley Morris

A vicious horror flick with an actual beast and someone who just acts like one.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Carries so much impacted menace and visual narrative gamesmanship that it brought back some of the excitement I felt nearly a decade ago watching Quentin Tarantino's ''Reservoir Dogs.''

Portland Oregonian Staff (Not credited)

It's all jolly bad fun, but the primo aspect of the exercise is the phenomenally intense performance by Kingsley as a careening sociopath who is every bit as dangerous to his friends as to his foes.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

A flashy, nasty triumph

Newsweek David Ansen

A demonstration of bravura acting.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Though it can overreach for emotional effect and overplay its hand at times -- Sexy Beast brings considerable virtues to telling this tale, including a great eye for faces and director Glazer's palpable excitement at working in the feature medium.

Village Voice Amy Taubin

There are long stretches in Sexy Beast that are so exhilarating it feels churlish to dwell on its flaws.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

He's (Kingsley) pure violence, a sociopath who radiates menace even while sitting perfectly still mouthing pleasantries.

New Times (L.A.) Andy Klein

One of the compulsively watchable films this year, second only to "Memento." It's a must-see, except for those with a sensitivity to on-screen mayhem.

Slate David Edelstein

The movie is riotously entertaining, and with a big heart, too.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Kingsley creates an unforgettable monster. Acting rarely gets this hypnotically explosive.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

These are hard men. They could have the "Sopranos" for dinner, throw up and have them again.

Chicago Tribune Robert K. Elder

A noir masterpiece with Oscar-caliber performances, Sexy Beast slowly turns up the heat until we squirm.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Noir has never been this bright.

Miami Herald Curtis Morgan

It is a riveting and memorable performance and Kingsley finds subtlety in Logan where there doesn't seem to be any.

Philadelphia Inquirer Desmond Ryan

Glazer has a daring sense of story structure that ratchets up the suspense, and his sense for sardonic black comedy is unerring.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

A Molotov cocktail of a movie, an engaging conflagration of British B-flick, cockney wit and gallows humor. There's even a delicate little love story in there.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Glazer shoots with the dreamy impressionism much favored in his principal line of work, all floaty slo-mos and in-your-face close-ups punctuated by a hard-driving rock score.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Appeal lies on the bright, shiny surface of its ostensibly simple plot, and in its rat-a-tat-tat language, which often sounds like Mamet-visits-Spyne.

Mr. Showbiz Michael Atkinson

Confident, mature, deeply conceived, and convincingly inhabited, it's a surprisingly humane film -- despite the close-range shotgun spray.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

It smarts, and shocks, and just for a moment blows your mind.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

Slightly misshapen and unbalanced, with a few loose ends, a few extraneous dream sequences. But there's something going on all the time.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

Plays in spots something like a stage play smartly brought to screen.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

A smart, funny, stylish and very violent British gangster movie.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The main event is the Mamet-esque battle of foul words between vintage hard-case Ray Winstone and the seething sociopath played by Ben Kingsley.

Variety Derek Elley

Often enjoyable, massively uneven Brit ganglander with an almost surreal approach to the genre.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Kingsley gives the movie a jolt and blows the rest of it to pieces.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Drove violence to the point of redundancy.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

In the end, I'm wondering what's so special about a film that has but one guilty pleasure and that's Ben Kingsley spraying saliva-lubricated variants of the F-word into the atmosphere like anti-aircraft fire for 10 solid minutes.