For better or worse, actors are often measured by their dramatic range. I’m not sure any actor has a greater one than Ben Kingsley, who in the span of 18 years played Gandhi, history’s most famous pacifist, and Don Logan, the biggest madman in British crime cinema (which would put him high in the running for biggest madman worldwide). He’s the explosive center of 2000’s Sexy Beast, a deliriously good film that plays Suns Cinema on Friday, Nov. 24. It’s sure to wake you up from your post-Thanksgiving slumber.

The feature debut of music video director Jonathan Glazer, Sexy Beast opens on Gal Dove (Ray Winstone), a professional thief who is recently retired from a life of organized crime, having his idyll on his Spanish estate disrupted by a runaway boulder. It brushes by his ear, nearly smashing his skull to bits, and lands directly in his swimming pool. This close call was merely a precursor to the arrival of Logan, an old associate more dangerous than any falling rock. When word arrives that Logan is on his way for a visit, the news inspires a cascade of anxious looks from Gal, his wife, and their friends from the old gang who have otherwise been enjoying their retirement. Logan is the kind of man whose name alone makes you sweat at its utterance. Only the greatest of actors can live up to such hype.

When Logan arrives to lure Gal back for one last job, it’s clear we’re dealing with an actor who knows how to surpass expectations. By the turn of the century, movie audiences had grown accustomed to volatile hit men; the trend that began in the 1990s with Joe Pesci in Goodfellas was, a decade later, nearly worn into the ground by imitators and cheap knockoffs. Still, Kingsley creates a fresh archetype, leaning in to the childishness of crime and playing Logan like a toddler whose brain was somehow implanted into the body of a middle-aged man. His friends are worried not so much about murderous rage, but rather a high-stakes tantrum. When Gal gently refuses Logan’s request to come back to London with him, Logan explodes in a rant of repetition: “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!” When accompanied by a glance from Kingsley that could freeze a grizzly in its tracks, it’s an offer that simply can’t be refused.

Although Kingsley’s performance is the centerpiece—he received an Oscar nomination for it, and lost inexplicably to Jim Broadbent for his work in Iris—the film is rippling with performances that transcend stereotypes. Winstone’s subtle work provides a perfect counterpoint to Kingsley’s live wire, and in a sense, he has the tougher job. Gal is a tender fellow who is motivated by love for his ex-adult film star wife (Amanda Redman), but he once ran with the wolves, and Winstone underplays his formidable physical presence to persuasively portray a man in conflict with his former self. Then there’s Ian McShane, who, as a London enforcer for the criminal enterprise, forms a terrifying and unique portrait of a professional killer. Like Winstone, he underplays. There’s a scene late in the film in which McShane stares at a subordinate with no feeling whatsoever—no anger or rage, just the way a troubled child gazes upon an ant. It’s a chilling image.

While the performances are the lead story, it proved an auspicious debut for Glazer, who has since earned a reputation as a Stanley Kubrick-like auteur. He takes his time between projects, which often bear little resemblance to each other. His latest, this year’s The Zone of Interest, is a drama about a Nazi family during the Holocaust, which is just about as far away as one can get from Sexy Beast. Still, his talent for image-making, so crucial to the success of a music video director (he has crafted images for Radiohead, Massive Attack, and Jamiroquai), is crucial to the film’s appeal. There are numerous dream sequences in the film, and some that merely express a dreamlike reverie. When Gal passionately embraces his lady, suddenly they are whisked into the sky and suddenly they are floating above a Spanish village. Then there’s Gal’s recurring nightmare in which a brownish beast appears from nowhere to challenge him to a battle. Is the beast a premonition of Logan or a symbol of Gal’s own violent past come back to slay him? Nothing is revealed, but the life Glazer and his tremendous cast breathe into the story makes it worth returning to this well-worn genre—at least one last time.

Sexy Beast plays at 9:35 p.m. on Nov. 24 at Suns Cinema. sunscinema.com. Sold out. Streaming on Max and Amazon Prime.