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Customer Reviews of The Limey

What "The Limey" *is* is the perfect revenge movie. Terence Stamp plays Wilson, a career criminal from Britain out to avenge his daughter's death. Wilson is a tough, bad man, who I couldn't help liking. He befriends his daughter's friends, who are fairly two-dimensional characters, but are played but such good actors that they stand out in the movie as something more than they are. People who admire Peter Fonda's character from "Easy Rider" will detest the character he plays now-- a washed-up hack riding on the commercialization of the 60s. But again, Fonda plays him with panache.

The real star of "The Limey" is the director-- Stephen Soderbergh. His style rings out louder than any chase scene, gun fight or siren. Listen closely for the clue in the score. Also, the flashback scenes are of an actual movie from the 60's ("Poor Cow") starring Stamp as a thief named Wilson.

Stylized, interesting, and good.

"Tell me about Jenny," he whispered.
Wilson (Terence Stamp) is an aging, but still surprisingly capable, British criminal just released from prison. He travels from the UK to LA and begins looking into his daughter's recent death with a gut feeling that Jenny's car wreck was not an accident. There Wilson meets Jenny's closest friends and asks them all about her life in LA. He soon targets Valentine (Peter Fonda), Jenny's lover, as the obvious culprit.

That's the surface of the film, but there is another layer here that turned standard thriller material into sublime art house fare. "The Limey" is very much a visual, cerebral film that moves in spirals and wanders through a labyrinth of moods and lyrical images. The film is finally all about memories, and its climax is an epiphany of memory and of the strange patterns that we fall into in our lives.

"The Limey" takes a circuitous approach to the phenomenon of women falling for men like their fathers and bringing their father-daughter baggage along with them. What trouble these relationships are the specific emotional patterns and games people play, which are worked out in great detail between child and parent very early in life. So what happens when you bring all that to a relationship with a new person who doesn't know the rules of your game, doesn't know when you're bluffing or when you're making a serious threat? Well, in a worst case scenario you might just end up dead.

And how does it feel, as a parent, to recognize your own handiwork in your child's homespun catastrophe? "The Limey" answers that question with the force of Greek tragedy, and the answer rings true. The film is a rare cinematic accomplishment, achieving both an honest emotional foundation for Wilson's dark epiphany and a web of rich, resonant images that anchor the entire experience in a vivid, dazzling tapestry.

An all-time favorite.
When you first encounter The Limey, you may not think much of it. The edit is unconventional if you're primarily used to major studio films. It's got a loose feel to the cinematography, like most Soderbergh films. It's not a slick, modern, hyperkinetic production. It's an episode in the midlife crisis of people who thought they'd die before they got old.

However, these things that may make it somewhat less accessible at first heighten its appeal on future viewings. Characters are introduced with a brief montage -- almost like you'd see on a TV show title sequence. The edit weaves conversations together in ways that don't seem logical at first.

The Limey isn't a film about logic or cold, hard, objective fact. It's a highly subjective retelling of the events that make up the story -- apparently from the view of Terence Stamp's character on his way home. It exists in the memories of those involved -- memories of Stamp's visit to Los Angeles to sort out the death of his daughter; memories of his past. For Peter Fonda, memories of southern California in the '60s and past glory.

This reflective memory form influences the cinematography -- things take on a sun-drenched, yellow/orange hue that is not dissimilar to your childhood memories. The soundtrack, too, calls back to days past with its music mostly coming from the 60s. (It's one of the best soundtracks in a long time).

One of the most impressive scenes is a dialog between Stamp and Lesley Ann Warren. The scene plays in many different places -- a pier, an apartment, and so forth. The scene jumps between them, and were you to take it at face value, it would make no sense. But when you remember that the whole film is just a memory, it makes complete sense.

The Limey is an innovative movie, mostly because of its unconventional approach to what would have otherwise been a flat revenge picture. You'll either be turned off immediately or strangely curious. I hope it's the latter for you -- it's a very interesting movie with great performances by all involved. It's one of my absolute essential DVDs.