Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

British cinema, as opposed to Hollywood British cinema ("Notting Hill", "Bridget Jones's Diary") is an art form in search of an identity. In one manifestation, there's the provincial whimsy of "The Full Monty" and "Billy Elliot," and in another, the grim realism of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. "Trainspotting", however, broke the mould and became something distinctively British and original — "Sexy Beast" has followed the lead. I had planned to see it a year ago but only got around to it at the weekend.

Director Jonathan Glazer presents the arid beauty of the Spanish Mediterranean landscape to the background of the punk hit "Peaches" by the Stranglers. As the Costa del Sol sun blazes down upon Gal Dove (Ray Winstone) we listen to his internal monologue: "Oh yeah. Bloody 'ell. I'm sweatin' 'ere. I'm roastin.' Don't you miss it? What? England? No. What a shithole. What a toilet. What's Spain like, then? It's hot, fucking hot. Too hot? Not for me. I like it."

But it's about to get a lot warmer for ex-thief Gal and his ex-porn-star wife, Deedee (Amanda Redman), and their fellow East London expats Aitch (Cavan Kendall) and Jackie (Julianne White). After a boulder from the hillside above his hacienda crashes into the swimming pool and just misses killing him, trouble surfaces in paradise. Gal's dreams are haunted by a rabbit-demon and then comes very bad news indeed: Don Logan (Ben Kingsley) is arriving the very next day with a job for him.

Don has been sent by London crime boss Teddy Bass (Ian McShane) to recruit Gal for a seemingly impossible safe-deposit robbery. "Where there's a will — and there's a fucking will — there's a way," Don insists. "And there's a fucking way." But Gal once did nine years in prison after attempting a similar job for Don. He's no longer fit for such work and doesn't need the money, he says. Still, the shark-like Don is impossible to repel, and Gal ends up back in the London rain. Like Orpheus, he must now descend into the dismal underworld of Don and Teddy if he hopes to see Deedee in the Spanish sun again.

Twenty years ago, Kingsley, 59, won an Oscar for his portrayal of Mahatma Gandhi. His Logan is an anti-Gandhi and he deserved an Oscar for best supporting actor this year, but "Sexy Beast" had disappeared from US cinemas by December and, to its shame, 20th Century Fox didn't release the DVD until March 12, just a week before Academy voting closed.

"Sexy Beast" (the title is inscrutable) has its roots in British theatre and is heavily indebted to the work of Harold Pinter. The language is Cockney with a constant staccato of "fuck" and "cunt". Along with being funny, sad, hideous and gorgeous, "Sexy Beast" is a thriller and a love story set in a nightmare world where diamonds and secrets are buried underwater and underground.