The Limey (1999)

Directed by Steven Soderbergh; produced by John Hardy and Scott Kramer

English career-criminal Wilson (Terence Stamp), newly released from prison, travels to Los Angeles to discover the truth behind the death of his daughter Jenny. Officially, she died in a fiery car-crash, but Wilson disbelieves this. His principal lead is Jenny’s much-older former boyfriend, record-producer Terry Valentine (Peter Fonda). Valentine and his ‘security consultant’ Avery (Barry Newman) learn of Wilson’s arrival; what they don’t know is just how determined and dangerous the Briton is.

At once a crime thriller and psychological character-study (as the best crime-thrillers seem to be) The Limey is a first-rate movie with high quality acting, writing, directing and – certainly not least – editing. The number of opinions I have heard and read of people disliking it at first, then thinking it excellent upon a second viewing is telling: its method of narrative is a contrast to most films.

At the centre of The Limey is Stamp’s performance. It is uniformly top-notch. He makes Wilson volatile, charming, fearless, deadly, caring and sympathetic. Wilson is a hard man, but one gathers that there is nothing he wouldn’t do for a true friend – though he seems unable to think of anyone who fits that category.

Wilson is a Cockney, complete with rhyming slang. His character might seem to border on caricature: too much of a Cockney to be true. But this is a man who has spent much, if not most, of his adult life in prison – he has trouble differentiating his various sentences – so he is a bit of a time-capsule: the behaviour and phrases he knows are from thirty years before. He has not had the opportunity to stay current, or to be influenced by the world at large.

Fonda’s Valentine is another interesting character, though nowhere near as likeable. He too is trapped in the past, though his incarceration is willing, and he has had every facility for living in the present and for the future. Instead, his glory days were the 1960s. In fact, he narrows them down to perhaps eighteen months: “1966, and some of ’67…”

Yet Valentine’s relationship with Jenny seems to have been genuine: the girl made an impression on everyone she met. Valentine’s conversations with another girlfriend are banal – his one serious talk with her is met with incomprehension - highlighting his lack of chemistry with her and, perhaps, accentuating by implication, his connection with Jenny.

Two other characters are fully realised: Roel (Luis Guzman) and Elaine (Lesley Ann Warren). They befriended Jenny and assist Wilson, though their respective approaches to that help is a contrast: Roel, a former convict, has an appreciation of Wilson based on similar pasts; Elaine is initially dismissive of the much-absent father Jenny had told her about. Other, more minor characters are used mainly for complications.

The writing doesn’t really offer surprises, except at the end, in the motive for Jenny’s death, which is related to how she used to behave with her father. But the script’s value is in how it unfolds the story, and the characters, especially of Wilson. We learn that he thinks Jenny was ashamed of him – Elaine corrects that to ‘disappointed’ – but it’s really Wilson who is ashamed and disappointed of how he let his daughter down. The emotions in the script are well-translated to the screen by Stamp’s face, once boyishly handsome, now rugged and lived-in.

Soderbergh’s direction is subtle, though it is actually overwhelmed by the more explicit editing, by Sarah Flack. Yet it is there in the small things, such how Wilson signifies that he appreciates Roel’s help by flicking a pack of cigarettes across a table toward him, or how the first thing that Wilson concentrates upon after stepping out of the airport terminal is a pair of local policemen.

But what confuses not a few viewers is the segmentation of a number of scenes. For instance, during a conversation, we see other events happening, some in the near future, some at an indeterminant time. Images appear that are seemingly unconnected with what is going on. This is not as bewildering as it may read. These brief glimpses of other actions are sometimes used as flashbacks, or as foreshadowing; sometimes to illustrate another scene of lesser importance which completes a principal scene without leaving it (eg. we see Wilson driving to a location while being given directions to it; the next complete scene is him already there). They also provide examples of the subject being discussed – this is often the case when Jenny is talked of – or to show feelings that continue over long periods. This editing trickery helps maintain a short, sharp running time (89 minutes) while sneakily adding more body to the film. Would I like to see it in movies frequently? Not at all. But in The Limey it is very effective.

The Limey is character-heavy, stoey-heavy creation fitted into a lean movie, driven by all the right elements.