THE LIMEY
Artisan
Starring Terence Stamp, Peter Fonda, Lesley Ann Warren, Luis Guzman,
Barry Newman, Joe Dallesandro, Nicky Katt, Amelia Heinle
Music by Cliff Martinez
Photographed by Ed Lachman
Written by Lem Dobbs
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
If Sarah Flack never gets an Oscar nomination
for her ingenious editing of Steven Soderbergh's witty, melancholy
revenge thriller/character study The Limey, then the members
of the Academy ought to be taken out. The story of a British ex-con
named Wilson (Terence Stamp) who tries to reconnect with his murdered
daughter while searching the streets of L.A. for her killer, The
Limey is told in a jigsaw-puzzle narrative style that shuffles
past and present events. For instance, whenever Wilson discovers
an important clue about his daughter's whereabouts before she
was killed, the film cuts to a shot of a pensive, brooding Wilson,
alone in a motel room or on an airplane. Are we watching him before
he embarks on his journey through L.A. or are we seeing him on
his way home to England, reflecting on his trip?
The nonlinear technique will befuddle
some viewers, especially those expecting to see a "TBS Movie
for Guys Who Like Movies." But it's a crucial — and
inspired — device because it underscores how time makes very
little sense to Stamp's title character, who, when the film opens,
has just been released from a nine-year prison sentence that has
messed with his concept of time, like it would do to any long-term
inmate.
Wilson isn't the only character in The
Limey who's disconnected from time. Terry Valentine (Peter
Fonda) is a faded Hollywood record producer who never got over
the end of the free-spirited '60s. This uneasy rider has gone
to seed and turned to the drug trade to stay wealthy as he lures
young starlets half his age with his hedonistic lifestyle and
with stories about the '60s. One of these aspiring actresses is
Wilson's daughter Jenny (Melissa George), who dated Valentine
and lived with him before her death. Wilson's trail leads him
to Valentine, but is Jenny's former lover really responsible for
her tragic fate?
Stamp and Fonda are compelling as older,
wearier versions of their '60s screen personas. Luis Guzman has
an amusing and poignant supporting turn as a friend of Jenny's
who assists Wilson on his manhunt, despite the language barrier
between the two (the Angelenos' inability to understand Wilson's
cockney slang is a running joke that fortunately, isn't overused).
Soderbergh calls The Limey "a very simple revenge
film with a lot of '60s baggage." Although the plot may be
a bit on the thin side, The Limey is anything but a simple
revenge film. The characters are hardly the automatons of Charles
Bronson shoot-'em-ups. Soderbergh and screenwriter Lem Dobbs refuse
to paint them in simplistic strokes. The seedy Valentine, sort
of an underworld Humbert Humbert with his taste for younger women,
may be the villain here, but like Humbert, he's more pathetic
than malicious; the film empathizes with his yearning for his
younger, less desperate days. It's Valentine's associates, volatile,
snarky hitman Stacy (Nicky Katt) and his older partner Uncle John
(Joe Dallesandro), who are more greedy and evil than Fonda's character.
As for Wilson, he's a man of contradictions. He has regrets about
the life he led before prison (cleverly depicted in flashbacks
composed of footage taken from Stamp's 1967 film Poor Cow,
in which he also played a criminal named Wilson), most of all
because it severed his relationship with his daughter, yet he
finds himself reverting back to the criminal life that drove her
away in order to find her killer. Which leads to another explanation
for the jigsaw-puzzle storytelling: it suits the story of a man
who's a puzzle, even to himself.
© 2002 Jim Aquino