The Limey (1999)

This is no lime! I mean lie! Director Steven Soderbergh's "The Limey" is one of the most beautifully photographed films I have ever seen. The film stars Terence Stamp who once again readily delivers a terrific performance. The film is about an aging ex-con who tries to avenge the killers who murdered his daughter. Oh blimey! I mean limey! I almost forgot! Peter Fonda executes a very subtle but assenting performance as the mischievous paranoid record executive. However, it is Director's Steven Soderbergh direction that makes this film sweet as lime. Colors reflecting moods, overlapping dialogue intersecting between different scenes, and character thought-provoking facial gestures are all Soderbergh traits that are once again perfected to make every scene work. If you don't believe me, go watch "The Limey" and then you will now that I am not lying. **** Good

Fmovies: For modern-day revenge movie, this is unusually low-key and pretty good. It's nothing super but it sneaks up on you. It might bore you, but it might not:. It's really hard to say.

If you enjoy a character study by an interesting actor (Terrence Stamp) you might like this. But, beware, it has its slow moments. What it is, is simply another revenge tale, so often told but so often fun to watch. This one is about a British criminal (Stamp) getting out of jail, finding out that something bad had happened to his daughter in Los Angeles, and going for the man (Peter Fonda) he feels is responsible for that.

There is a bit too much flashback in here, so you have to be prepared to put up with that. Of note, the filmmakers used actual film footage from a 1967 film of Stamp to show him in his younger days.

What I did really enjoy was Stamp's vocabulary and the interesting looks on his face. The supporting cast also adds nicely to this story, particularly Barry Newman, who plays Fonda's bodyguard. There isn't a lot of action in here but when it does occur, it's pretty intense.

Like its title and leading man (Terrance Stamp), "The Limey" surprises by what it is NOT. Stamp plays an aging hood, a "Limey," who has spent much of his life in prison. At first glance, Stamp appears a "loser," who is now throwing what remains of his life away on a questionable vendetta against an aging rock producer (Peter Fonda) who may or may not be responsible for the death of Stamp's daughter. However, director Steven Soderbergh ("Traffic," "Out of Sight," "Erin Brockavich"),skillfully intercuts scenes of past, present and future, nonsync dialogue, music, peripheral action and plotting to create an efficient, consistently surprising and highly effective movie. Just as the film is about to become routine and predictable, new key characters and plot information is revealed. To Soderbergh's credit, this never seems forced or contrived. Alas, Soderbergh's style tends to undercut the effectiveness of Leslie's Warren's role, and the climactic shoot out is disappointingly pat. Nevertheless,the payoff is terrific. Special note should be made of the performances of Luis Guizman, Barry Newman and, especially, Nicky Katt ("Boston Public").

Don't let the title fool you, "The Limey" is one terrific movie and Soderbergh, for once, deserves all the praise he can get.

The Limey fmovies. Sodemberg in good form, while Mr. Stamp hams it up as your Stepney old china gangster giving a performance which is both deceptively simple and sophisticated with a hint of method thrown in for good measure. Peter Fonda, as the suave record producer Terry Valentine, is the perfect impersonation of a hippie growing old disgracefully and on Big Sur backdrop, reminds me of one of the Beach Boys (Brian Wilson possibly...who probably was a good mate of his in the good old days anyway) "the 60s were just like a dream with its own language and locations which didn't really exist, and then you woke up... not just the 60s really, just 66 and a little bit of 67.." showing off to his new starlet girlfriend... There is a rather moving moment toward the end of the film which brings to the fore the essential human frailty, how underneath the mask of our 'adult' certainties there is often a confused little child... And finally, if you like thrillers like myself, this movie is that rare thing, an intelligent sophisticated one, which keeps you on the edge of your seat for a couple of hours, without feeling, like unfortunately happens with a lot of similar productions, that when the credits start to roll, you have been through 120 minutes of disposable entertainment... HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Soderbergh is a really odd director. His movies have run the gamut from the wacky, self indulgent surrealism of 'Schizopolis' to the pandering, sell-out mediocrity of 'Ellen Brockovich'. He's really hard to get a handle on. 'Out Of Sight' was stylish with an outstanding cast but left me cold. 'Traffic' featured a handful of great performances, most notably Benicio Del Toro's, but was overall simplistic, unconvincing and cliched. For my money his strongest achievements to date have been his overlooked noir-ish 'Underneath', and this, his involving revenge drama 'The Limey'.

Terrence Stamp, a fine actor who has appeared in more than his fair share of bad movies, really takes this role and runs with it. He radiates dignity and power as Wilson, the English career criminal out to avenge the death of his estranged daughter. My only problem with his performance, and the movie as a whole, is his Cockney accent, which borders on caricature. If you can get over that hurdle you'll be impressed by the depth of his performance.

Peter Fonda, who has never impressed me much as an actor in the past (not even his much lauded role in the overrated 'Ulee's Gold'), is also fine as the sleazy record producer who Wilson suspects of wrongdoing. Stamp and Fonda obviously relish playing these characters, and their chemistry together is the cornerstone of the movie. Both actors are supported by an impressive array of old and new faces - including a surprisingly effective Lesley Anne Warren (her best since 'Cop'), the always watchable Luis Guzman ('Boogie Nights', 'Carlito's Way', etc.), blasts from the pasts Barry Newman (cult classic 'Vanishing Point') and Joe Dallessandro (former Warhol superstar), and future star in the making Nicky Katt ('Strange Days', 'SubUrbia').

Soderbergh cleverly uses footage from Ken Loach's kitchen sink drama 'Poor Cow' for flashbacks, and plays upon Stamp and Fonda's 60s screen personas, but the film is no exercise in mere nostalgia. 'The Limey' is a rarity in Hollywood these days - an intelligent, thoughtful, well crafted and acted adult movie. I liked it a lot.

Somewhere between Out of Sight and the hype of the Erin Brockovich/Traffic double-punch, Soderbergh made this diamond of a film. Terence Stamp is the gem at the centre of it, his beautiful face, always a cinematic treasure, a virtual masterclass in film acting. How this performance went ignored is beyond me but maybe that punishment is fitting for the career criminal he plays.

He is Wilson who after finishing a nine-year sentence "at her Majesty's leisure" goes to L.A. to discover how his daugher, Jenny, met her end while he was in the big house and to avenge her death. Peter Fonda plays her former lover, a wicked, soulless record producer who was big in the sixties and both actors trade on the ghosts of their cinematic pasts to striking effect; particularly Stamp, as footage from his 1967 film, Poor Cow (directed by Ken Loach), is repurposed and edited into the film's ever-shifting timescape. (It is a credit to Soderbergh that he would dare to use another filmmaker's footage and make it so central to his own, even using Loach's footage for his closing shots. In Soderbergh's hands it shows that he is first and foremost a storyteller instead of a shallow egotist and it plays like a grand, cinematic homage to his star.)

Soderbergh shuffles time and Wilson's life like a deck of cards yet always keeps the story moving forward--the editing by Sarah Flak is a marvel. It's a lovely, startling effect; rather than weigh the narrative down with a number of plodding, onerous details, this style keeps the thing as light as a souffle yet full of implications as we imagine the ways and necessities of Wilson telling and retelling, hashing over his life, representing and misrepresenting his actions or inaction. These are the lies he tells himself, the truth he can live with. It's completely engaging and frees the viewer to imagine the surrounding details and circumstances however they like. He certainly couldn't have done it with anyone but Stamp, who is solid throughout; his stillness and his beautiful blue, crystalline eyes like placid pools of water that mask a depth of feeling and a lifetime of regret. That we empathise with an ignoble savage like Wilson at all is purely down to Stamp's controlled, unsentimental performance. Stamp's Wilson doesn't make apologies. Terence Stamp is iconic precisely because of the films he chose to make, particularly after Schlesinger's Far From The Madding Crowd when he could've done anything but went to work with Loach, Pasolini and Fellini instead. Like his co-star Fonda, who also spent many years in the wilderness, Stamp's performance in The Limey stands as a long-promised return to form, which he'd been hinting at for years.

There's great support from Luis Guzman, Lesley Ann Warren (as an L.A. acting coach, who suggests in her few short scenes with Stamp a potentially epic romance), Barry Newman as Fonda's henchman and the startlingly fresh Amelia Henle who shows that, yes, there is an art to playing "the girlfriend." (Joe Dallesandro is in there somewhere as well in some capacity but is completely unrecognisable.) If the slight bit in the middle lacks the polish of the beginning and the end (it appears a large subplot about two hitmen must've been jettisoned in the editing room), the dialogue still crackles throughout, with Stamp--as a one-man amalgam of London's east end--throwing off Cockney rhyming slang ("China" "plates" thus "mates") and