A misleading title, except perhaps in tone, for a British caper picture that perches on or near the same edgy edge as Guy Ritchie's Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. A gagster's gangster film. The big difference, however, between Jonathan Glazer's debut film and either of Ritchie's is -- highly subjective criterion -- that when it tries to be funny it actually succeeds. Not all the time. Not the heart-shaped smoke ring blown by the hero, a "definitely retired" denizen of the London underworld now living the life of Riley on the Costa del Sol, to his adored and worshipped wife, "Dirty Deedee," the former porn star. Not the Valentine-card image of them floating above the lights of the city in a horizontal embrace. But regularly. Judiciously. Ungreedily. The extended centerpiece of the movie, really the bulk of the movie, is the sharply written (when you can decipher the dialect) powwow between this contented sloth and the former confederate who means to coax him out of retirement and won't take no for an answer. More specifically, the centerpiece of the movie is Ben Kingsley. (Yes, there's eventually a caper, almost as an afterthought, and not the most watertight -- we might say -- of criminal schemes.) It's quite wonderful how we can tell before his arrival, just from the throat-clutching effect of the name "Don Logan" on its speakers and hearers, that we're in for something, without knowing what. It's even more wonderful how that something turns out to be so much more, and different, than we ever could have guessed. Devilish in demeanor (jutting goatee and shaven dome), but bedevilled himself below the surface (witness the fragmented talk to the mirror as he works himself into a lather), a veritable ambassador of misery ("I won't let you be happy! Why should I?"), practically a force of nature and yet a precisely motivated and malevolent one, he is incongruously smaller than the man he terrorizes, a yapping terrier facing down a slobbering Saint Bernard, all flat and hard where the other is bloated and squishy, a prohibitive favorite in any stare-down contest, and so thoroughly awful as to be thoroughly amusing. Ray Winstone, Amanda Redman, Ian McShane, James Fox. (2001) — Duncan Shepherd