The Limey
by Steven Soderbergh
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DVD details
Actor: Barry Newman, Joe Dallesandro, Lesley Ann Warren, Luis Guzmán, Terence StampDirector: Steven Soderbergh
Brand: Lions Gate
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Spanish (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 89 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-02-20
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Lions Gate
DVD Reviews of The Limey
DVD Review: A moral symphony with visual jazz chords
Summary: 4 Stars
I hate the idea, arrogantly enough, of people liking a great piece of art for all of the wrong reasons. Some I have heard have gone so far left field with metaphors about the title character of this film that they have even found a way to take the inexorable rage and focus of Terence Stamp's character in this movie completely out of the actual context of the film to make him a poster boy for the Conservative Right--an often ironically apt analogy, again, for all the wrong reasons.
What makes this film so great is the integrity of Soderberg to his central character and his unique and artistic relationship to the plot. He makes his style subserivent to the story in such a way as to create the artistic paradox that says he has done the exact opposite; the marriage of the two is perfect. Terence Stamp (who is brilliant in this by the way) is a "Limey" on a juggernaut's course of revenge for the man he holds responsible for the death of his only child, a grown daughter, in Los Angeles. Peter Fonda (who is not quite as good as Stamp but does get out of his character's way at moments that are beautifully real) plays one of the many archetypal Baby-Boomer roles in existence today: an insecure, narcississtic and weak playboy/Recording Executive with a drug problem and predilection for impressionable young girls. One of these girls in his past may have been the Limey's inexplicably dead daughter. These two men are separated by an entire world--an Atlantic Ocean in one sense, and seemingly antithetical cultures on another--with many people of all walks of life (and levels of both beauty and depravity) in between. It is the painful, mysterious death of a young woman in the vicinity of one of these men that links the two of them, and is the genesis of one man's mission against the other.
But that plot is merely the icing on the cake of this movie. It is nowhere near as powerful or as important as the theme, which could only be fully experienced by an observer (us, the audience) via the heart of the main character (the "Limey" himself). This is where Soderberg's style transcends the boundaries of simple ability and approaches genius. Through the majestic techniique of breaking the time line with numerous off kilter frames of both foreshadowing and reminiscence (and you can't tell which is which or what is even real until the end ties them all up) the theme becomes prfoundly real and, with each frame, more obvious. The Limey is on the same mission he has been on virtually all of his life. He is not running toward something; he is running from himself, using the easily understandable motives behind the new thing he is coincidentally running toward as the newest and boldest version of an excuse.
Musings and abstractions on the wordly significance of the Limey's character in the context of his personal mission are pointless and become fairly infantile without taking this, the theme, into consideration. The "Limey" is not chasing after the devil to stare him in the eye and kill him; his soul has for the most part already been sold. He is chasing a false hope that the contract for his soul, already signed in his own blood on the dotted line, either does not really exist in his personal hell or can be bought back with the weak appearance of a vengeful but essentially good deed. And like every person, the irony of running away from oneself--regardless of the inner demons you're trying to escape--is that you eventually run even faster into that one and only aspect of yourself headlong.
Hell: there is no way out...but through.
The Limey has more in common with Mickey Roarke's character in ANGEL HEART than with any hero.
Terence Stamp's performance is brilliant because he makes you, like all great actors, like his character as much as he does, regardless of its above-listed failings or bad deeds. But again, that's because Stamp does such a good job at this role, not because his character, though forgiveable, is all that likeable as a person. Al Pacino did an equally great job in both THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE and SCARFACE a few years ago, but I don't see myself emulating his characters by becoming a devil-worshipping drug dealer and moving to Havana because of it. Only a child could look at THE LIMEY and call both the main character's inner pain-inspired character failings and the gradual unfolding of their obvious destructive consequences something other than what they are--and only a deeply fearful and probably formally abused child raised on too many action movies at that.
This movie is no masterpiece, but it is full of depth, with layers that bloom to reveal themselves with each passing frame. It is very good, and you will be surprised at the existential questions its simple answers ask of you, while still being entertaining.
Description of The Limey
British ex-con Wilson (Terence Stamp) arrives in Los Angeles to investigate the mystery of his daughter's "accidental" death. His prime suspect, the wealthy, heavily guarded, music promoter Terry Valentine (Peter Fonda), is no easy target. Propelled into an increasingly brutal search for truth, Wilson, with single-mindedness and terrifying precision, moves unstoppably toward revenge.Steven Soderbergh's follow-up to his sexy thriller Out of Sight is an equally stylish but far more austere crime drama, a work of memory that mixes flashbacks, flashforwards, and ruminations on the present into an invigorating cinematic quilt. Terence Stamp is Wilson, an aging cockney criminal fresh out of prison who flies to Los Angeles to search for his daughter's killer. She died in a car wreck, but he suspects that her lover, a music industry mogul named Valentine (Peter Fonda), knows more than he's telling. Wilson is a fish out of water indeed, a cool, cruel London thug on the airy, sun-bright street of L.A., a silver-haired criminal taking on street punks and hit men with the relentless drive of a man possessed. It's like Get Carter channeled through Point Blank, a hard-edged revenge thriller steeped in sorrow and regret, trading the warmth of Out of Sight's romantic heat for a more contemplative remove. Fonda beautifully plays off his cinematic history of 1960s hippies and rebels as a nervous, cowardly millionaire sellout in white cotton peasant shirts and a deep California tan. Luiz Guzman and Lesley Ann Warren costar as Wilson's "adopted" guides through modern L.A., and Barry Newman is excellent as Valentine's tough, terse head of security, another aging pro blindsided by Wilson's relentless single-mindedness. Soderbergh quotes from Ken Loach's 1967 film Poor Cow (sadly not available on video in the U.S.) for Wilson's flashbacks as a fresh-faced teenage thug. --Sean Axmaker
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