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Every so often, England gives us a gift. Or sometimes it's Ireland. Or Scotland. Or, occasionally Australia (though not that often). The gift they give us is a great, rugged, burly, ham-fisted, sneering, smiling, bird-chasing, tosser-dispensing lug. What they give us is a bloke.

Yes, as the esteemed Wing Chun pointed out in her recent H!ITG! on Rhys Ifans, England (or, in that case, Wales) often gives us shaggy ne'er-do-wells or poncy gentlemen in waistcoasts, talking about Queen and country and pointing their looking glasses toward the horizon. And don't get me wrong: those gentlemen have their purposes. One of those purposes, however, is not to lurk in the background ready to bust the fingers of some cheeky monkey who's way out of his depth but doesn't know it. Or to sit and stare soulfully at their own battle-nicked knuckles or their oft-rearranged nose and wonder if they weren't put on this earth for some greater destiny, before their keeper snaps his finger and they squeeze in the back of some impossibly small Euro-car to trundle off and toss some two-faced whinger off a bridge.

That's bloke's work. That's the work of Ray Winstone.

Actually, the work of Ray Winstone -- ex-boxer of some renown, and best known to U.S. audiences as the soulful and suntanned Gary "Gal" Dove in Sexy Beast (the main thug on the receiving end of Sir Ben Kinglsey's spittle), or as the brutish Teague in Cold Mountain, or as the even-more-brutish dad Ray in Nil By Mouth, or as the ironically misnamed Mr. French in The Departed, or as the excellently named Bruno Fella in the upcoming movie-you-probably-won't-see, Breaking And Entering -- encompasses much more than finger-breaking and wistful wondering.

For one thing, like many of the great British gifts to American cinema, Winstone's done about every part under the sun in the UK, including approximately 200,000 TV roles and a handful of Shakespeare's finest. Granted, even his UK roles gravitate toward projects with names like Bouncer and Tough Love and One Foot In The Grave, playing roles with names like "Ray" and "Convict" and "Prison Warden" and "Tommy Mason" and "John 'Tank' Malling" and "Soldier Sam." Point being, Ray Winstone can do more than just make you drip poopy in your undie-drawers with a simple growl and a crack of his knuckles. But that he can do very, very well.

Blokes are awesome, and useful, and awesomely useful because, the entire oeuvre of Guy Ritchie notwithstanding, British gangster films are just better than American ones these days. Sure, we all love Al Pacino and Joe Pesci and their sweeping tales of immigrant ambition with religious subtexts and operatic overtones. We also all love watching some half-mad British thug smash chairs and snap bones and pull teeth and shout "Are you havin' a larf?!" Sure, it's funny when Ricky Gervais says it on Extras, but if Ray Winstone ever said it -- or growled it, for that matter -- well, our undie-drawers would be soiled. Deeply. We're not havin' a larf, Mr. Winstone, we swear.