The Limey | | Cast : | Terence Stamp, Peter Fonda | | Director : | Steven Soderbergh | | Studio : | Artisan Entertainment | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | January 01, 1999 | | DVD Released Date : | February 26, 2002 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 31, 2005 | | Summary | Soderbergh Tackles the Limey | Content
 | Before the film TRAFFIC utilized a unique, loose editing style, Steven Soderbergh created THE LIMEY to try it out. Terrance Stamp (SUPERMAN, PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT) portrays the Limey; a just released convict-seeking revenge for the death of his young daughter. He flies out to Los Angeles and hunts down the suspected killer, a wealthy music producer. And as his hunt progresses, a lot of lives change in what ends up a very small film. The story plays chronologically while the editing hops around with little regard for TIMEX. And it's a great experiment. The DVD has a very basic transfer of both audio and video. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 11, 2005 | | Summary | Is This Really a 5-Star Movie...? | Content
| Probably not, but I love it and am giving it 5 stars anyway.
This movie sets out to be a very simple narrative, a quest/revenge story, in which Wilson, an aged cockney criminal fresh from a 9-year stint "at Her Majesty's leisure," sets out to learn the truth about his estranged daughter's death in Los Angeles. Along the way, though, it becomes a thoughtful story about self-discovery, of lives lived in one direction and understood (tragically too late) in another...as all lives are.
This flick is full of great performances. Stamp is great as the cool, deliberate, and ruthless Wilson, a man who is not gratuitously violent, but not at all hesitant to use it when it suits his needs or satisfies his desire. He is a fearless--and probably foolish--criminal who has spent half his life behind bars and has become thoughtful, introspective.
Barry Newman, another hippie-era cult star (Vanishing Point, 1971), fills his supporting role as Valentine's (Peter Fonda) head of security with a snarling grittiness that contrasts with Fonda's whiney, pampered aging record producer character hilariously. Nicky Katt his equally hilarious as an idiot hitman who takes himself very seriously ("Hey, this is a lifestyle I embrace!").
I don't think this movie's non-linear editing is at all confusing. While shots from one part of the narrative are frequently inserted into scenes in another part, they make perfect sense within their "new" contexts, even if they are temporally out of place, and this editing reflects perfectly the idea that this story is one that is reflected upon, not told as it actually happens, and the realization that past actions can't help but define the present.
This movie is a treat, and worth seeing. It's a shame the DVD doesn't have any interviews or commentary, though, because I would like that access to the artists' insights into their own work. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 05, 2005 | | Summary | My name's . . . Wilson | Content
| This is one of the finest crime dramas of recent years. Harkening back to another great film, 1971's Get Carter, Terrance Stamp plays an ex-con, Wilson, who has comes to America to discover the causes of his daughter's death. I found this a great film for many reasons:
Steven Soderbergh's direction was fascinating. He plays with time and images in a very interesting way, mixing up sharp close ups and long shots done out of time (some in flashback, some looking into the future). While this smacks hard of arty/indi filmmaking, I think with this film it really worked to tremendous advantage. There are several shots of Terrance Stamp in extreme close-up, focusing on his strange, pale blue eyes, while sun and shadow play across his face. I found these shots oddly moving, and after a second viewing I figured out why: in these shots the sunlight passes over his face like the rising and falling of the sun - like the passing of time. Soderbergh's direction is very tight throughout, and his shot selection is always excellent.
I love the casting of this movie. Terrance Stamp could not have been better, cast as Wilson, the cockney career criminal that has come to the plastic world of California looking for some very hard answers. His Wilson is a once-in-a-career creation, much like Clint Eastwood's, William Munny from The Unforgiven. Stamp really makes Wilson jump right off the screen in every scene he is in. Several good to great actors find their finest moments on film here, always playing against type. For once Lesley Ann Warren is NOT a bubble-headed sex starved vixen, but instead a woman with depth and intelligence. For once Luiz Guzman is NOT a slightly comic, second banana bad-guy Hispanic but instead a decent, complex man that proves his metal during the course of the film.
Peter Fonda plays a music mogul named Valentine with a heart of corruption beyond his melancholy reminisces of the 60's (who, in an offhand moment, explains the 60's perfectly in about 5 or 6 lines of dialogue). Barry Newman seems to come out of nowhere with a pitch perfect performance as a suave head of security for the Valentine empire.
Finally, watch for the two-man hit team of Nicky Katt and Joe Dallesandro, who are hired to kill Stamp. Nicky Katt gives a real, real creepy performance, nearly worth the price of admission by itself, and it was just great to see Dallesandro mixing it up again (Dallesandro comes out of the Andy Warhol factory and was Warhol's beefcake boy in several of his movies).
All in all, a film that will easily stand up to repeat viewings.
This is one you should have in your collection.
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| Rating | | | Date | February 16, 2005 | | Summary | a tad OTT | Content
| Check out the excellent review by Doug Anderson: Style Chosen Over Content, March 29, 2002. I agree with him 100%. Stamp is a fascinating actor to watch and listen to. He was very memorable in The Hit, especially in his reading of the John Donne sonnet; and he is not like anyone else. Here, he is totally unglamorous, even off-puttingly ugly, yet has a dominant persona. There is something wrong with this film, however, and perhaps it is just the director continually saying to himself and the audience: Look at me! I'm state of the art arty. The style is annoyingly obtrusive. Nearly the whole of the time your attention is completely taken up with the tricksy flashes --- to the point where nothing else seems to matter. Peter Fonda is too willowy for words. He doesn't seem to have enough spine even to cream off a money-laundering narcotics percentage, and it's difficult to envision him as anything more enterprising than a kept toy-boy, by someone like, say, Norma Desmond, or Ayn Rand. Amusing to see Liam from The Big Lebowski falling off the balcony: doesn't this actor ever get to speak? Well, now we know what his job was when he wasn't bowling.
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| Rating | | | Date | January 25, 2005 | | Summary | A Hard, Fast Movie With A Terrific Terence Stamp | Content
| When Wilson (Terence Stamp), a hard-edged working-class ex-con, gets off the flight from London to Los Angeles, you know that whoever he's looking for is going to have a tough time. Wilson is after whoever was responsible for the death of his daughter. He goes through people relentlessly and remorselessly until he finally deals with a record producer and drug dealer named Terry Valentine (Peter Fonda) and Valentine's hired protector and partner, Jim Avery (Barry Newman). Along the way he picks up a helper (Luiz Guzman) and meets a retired actress (Lesley Ann Warren) who makes him look at himself a little, but not for long.
This is a first-class movie of revenge and retribution, with smart, sharp dialogue, efficient direction and terrific performances all around, especially by Stamp. He plays an aging professional criminal, tough as they come. Stamp at 60 nails the part. There's not an ounce of fat on the guy. His eyes stare coldly. When a big, muscular thug tries to eject him from a party at the hillside home of Valentine, Wilson tosses him off the cantilevered pool to his death. When several thugs rough him up in a warehouse, make fun of his age and toss him out into the parking lot, he gets up, walks to his car, takes up a gun and walks right back. Several of the thugs get hurt.
Fonda also is very good. He plays Valentine as an amoral, self-delusional Hollywood player who is greedy and spineless. Newman is Fonda's muscle, and Newman comes across as almost as tough as Stamp.
An amusing touch is a couple of flashbacks Wilson has, thinking of his daughter when she was a baby and he was with the mother. The flashbacks are taken from a movie Stamp made in 1967. This is typical of the clever directing of Soderbergh. He has produced a movie which I hope won't be forgotten.
The Limey, in my view, is a keeper.
The DVD looks just fine |
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