It sounds like a typical gangster movie. Mobsters try to convince retired criminal to come back for one more heist. Well, the threadbare plot is given new life by two things: great performances by everyone involved (especially Kingsley, whom I will discuss later), and an emphasis on the convincing instead of on the heist itself.

Retired criminal Gal (Ray Winstone) lives in sunny Spain with his beautiful wife Deedee (Amanda Redman) and glittering white villa. He bakes in the sun, has dinner parties with fellow retired criminal Aitch (Cavan Kendall) and his wife Jackie (Julianne White), goes hunting rabbits, and swims in his pool. Two harbingers of doom mar his idyllic existence: he is haunted by nightmares of a humanoid, evil rabbit-thing that shoots him as he sleeps (a completely unexpected but strangely effective plot device); and a huge boulder crashes out of nowhere into his pool, narrowly missing his head. These two ill omens are closely followed by the news that Don Logan will be coming personally to convince Gal to do the job. This elicits cold fear from the quartet who rightfully believe that their wonderful lives are about to be wrecked by a tornado.

That tornado is Ben Kingsley as Don Logan, with bald head, ramrod-straight back, and a manner somewhat like the trigger of a pistol. He refuses to make small talk, quickly getting to his point: Gal must go back with him for this one last job, or Don will probably kill him. When Gal protests that he is happy in Spain, Don replies, "I won't let you be happy. Why should I?" Thus commences a harrowing, difficult, thirty minute long harangue as the shockingly brutal Don uses threatened and actual violence to attempt to convince the rapidly fading Gal to return to England. One scene in particular had me literally shrinking down in my seat. Kingsley is shaving his face while having a terse conversation with his image in the mirror. The way the rage slowly builds in him is truly awe-inspiring, and it is almost a relief when he explodes and attacks Gal, who is sleeping in the next room.

There is a development which I will not discuss for fear of giving away too much. The last third of the film concerns Gal's return to England for the heist. It is well-acted, intelligent, and somewhat suspenseful, but Kingsley doesn't have a direct role in it, so it lacks the punch of the earlier part. Despite this, the film is one of the most alive and refreshing films to be released so far in this disappointing year.

About Kingsley. OK, this guy played Gandhi, fer chrissakes! He scared the crap out of me in this movie! Ben Kingsley delivers the performance of a lifetime as the utterly implacable, evil dynamo that dominates the film, even though he's only onscreen for about a third of it. I am not exaggerating when I say that he gives life to the most frightening character since Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs. There were moments in the film where I was cringing, sitting safely in my seat, because of the utterly overwhelming power of his scenery-chewing diatribes. He was a force of nature. Five goats for him, four for the rest of the cast, who were great but couldn't help but be overwhelmed. If Kingsley does not win an Oscar for this role, there is no justice in the world.

There is no justice in the world.