FauxNixon

The Limey is a 1999 Steven Soderbergh-directed, Lem Dobbs-written crime thriller in the neo-noir style, but with drastically different, carefully fragmented editing that gives the film a wonderfully novel feel and imparts the meaning of what is being said or done in a much different way than the Hollywood staple method of simply splicing things together into a chain. It is a story of revenge; Wilson (Terence Stamp) has recently been released from prison in Britain to find that his daughter has been killed in Los Angeles and he travels there to discover why and if there was foul-play as he suspects, to avenge her death.

Upon his arrival in Los Angeles he seeks out the man who sent him the newspaper clipping informing him of his daughter’s Jenny’s (Melissa George) death: Eduardo Roel (Luis Guzman). Roel is an ex-con himself who was a friend of Wilson’s daughter Jenny and provides him with assistance since Wilson finds Los Angeles a very strange and alien environment.

Together with Roel, Wilson meets Jenny’s acting teacher and best friend and together the three of delve into the underworld of Los Angeles in an attempt to discern how and why Jenny’s boyfriend Terry George (Peter Fonda) may have had her killed. Wilson is quickly established as a very dangerous character in an early scene where he leaps from a dead calm into a tortuously dominant hold on a thug to which he is asking questions and, after being savagely beaten by those employed by that thug, returns to gun calmly gun all of them down one-by-one, leaving only one to flee the scene of Wilson’s blood-spattered face screaming for the man to, “Tell him I’m coming!”

Together with fantastic performances by Stamp, Fonda and Guzman, particularly, director Soderbergh and writer Dobbs weave careful editing into the film by constantly fragmenting both the soundtrack and screen action into often out-of-sequence groupings. It is referred to as fragmenting by Soderbergh and it allows for the ability of a film to really show not only that a character is thinking, but what he is thinking; viewers are allowed to see the film from his point-of-view, inclusive of many of his thoughts, which leads to conversations’ audio often coming out of sequence with the action shots of the speaking, flashbacks with dialogue superimposed, and other techniques.

Both the director and writer, speaking after the release, reportedly wished they had fragmented the movie more so than they did. What they did, however, changes the movie from something other than just a simple, but great crime thriller into a new aspect of cinematography that has continued with Soderbergh into later films and increased in general usage greatly since The Limey’s release.

The movie is fantastic and definitely something that captures both the spirit of an indie movie combines with that enough of a mainstream appeal that its poor box office showing is surprising. Perhaps, had it been released in this environment, with American audiences more accustomed to Cockney rhyming slang and a greater deal of cinematic complexity, and even Soderbergh’s style specifically, it would fare a great deal better. It is certainly something that will make for a great viewing by a viewer with even the slightest patience to allow a movie to play out in front of themselves. It is beautiful, surely, but not so richly complex that it is challenging to view. Just sit back and enjoy it and the startlingly effective performance by Terence Stamp!