But Jonathan Glazer is about to surprise us.
Glazer is part of a new wave of British advertising directors moving into feature films.
Only a brave few have attempted the crossover since Ridley and Tony Scott, Adrian Lyne, Alan Parker and Hugh Hudson went to Hollywood in the early Eighties. That's changing now, with producer Martha Fiennes and directors Simon West, Simon Monjack and Glazer cleverly using bigger budgets and renewed confidence in the advertising industry to attract the attention of backers and producers. Glazer's first film, Sexy Beast, which was shot in Britain and Europe and opens next month, revisits Guy Ritchie's now familiar Snatch gangland turf but with a terrifying and grown-up ferocity. Instead, extraordinarily, the screenplay emerges triumphant, and characterisation is vindicated as a far more frightening tool than a flip attitude to violence could ever be. It made such an impact last year that recent polls have already pronounced it one of the most popular adverts of all time.