Have a butcher's
- Review By:
- tpb
- Date:
- January 25, 2009
- Movie:
- The Limey
- Director:
- Steve Soderbergh
- Released:
- 1999
- Good Guy:
- Wilson
- Played By:
- Terence Stamp
- Bad Guy:
- Terry Valentine
- Played By:
- Peter Fonda
- MPAA Rating:
- R
- Family Friendly Ages:
- Older teens
It can't be easy to come to the conclusion, while working towards being a hero, that the hero and the villain are one and the same. Wilson (Terence Stamp), grief-stricken and vengeful, comes to this realization as he slowly works through the details of, and the characters involved in his daughter's death. Recently released from a nine-year stint in prison for armed robbery, he has traveled to Los Angeles from London to find out what happened to Jenny (Melissa George), who was reported to have died in a car accident. A silver-haired man of few words, whose small frame and lack of outward emotion belie his dangerous capabilities, Wilson contacts two of Jenny's friends who provide him with information on her circle of acquaintances, including her love interest; transportation; and introduction to some of the seamier parts of town.
His first stop is an isolated warehouse manned by idle, dangerous men. He sneaks in and competently roughs-up one nasty character in a back office from whom he manages to gather contact information on Terry Valentine (Peter Fonda), the love interest whose house Jenny was leaving when she died. However, the warehouse gang is alerted to the intrusion and they beat Wilson viciously before throwing him down the stairs and out into the street. They walk away from his crumpled heap confident they have sufficiently warned him off. Anyone else would have been. But Wilson looks like a man who is used to taking a beating as he picks himself off the road and slowly and painfully straightens up as he follows his adversaries back into the warehouse. He eliminates all but one whom he lets escape to deliver a “Tell him I'm coming!” message.
Wilson deals with subsequent henchmen with ease and competence as he continues his investigation. But when he is alone, he is left with his remembrances of his failures as a father, his daughter as a young girl, and what brought him to LA in the first place. “The Limey” plays through these memories by cleverly editing in clips of Stamp in the 1967 film “Poor Cow”. The 1967 Stamp plays a thief and a ne'er-do-well with a wife and baby, a younger version of Wilson which he recalls in depressed sepia-tones. Throughout the film, he wears his grief on his face and sinks deeper into it as the facts of Jenny's death unfold and as he places the past alongside the present.
Fonda nails the character of Valentine, an aging, empty record producer who sums up the sixties as a dreamy party that took place in “'66 and early '67”. Luis Guzman as Eduardo and Lesley Ann Warren as Elaine serve as quiet yet solid, friendly ballast to Wilson's intense focus and vindictiveness. The out-of-sequence, clipped editing is intriguing and keeps “The Limey” moving along at an almost off-kilter pace as it moves towards its violent conclusion.
Wilson's thick British accent, his terse responses to questions, and his use of cockney slang give him just the right amount of inscrutability that a preposterone character often needs to rise above mere mortals. At the same time, his character is summed up perfectly through this exchange between Eduardo and Elaine: “Hey, do you even understand half the s*** this guy's sayin'?” “No.” she says. “But I know what he means.”
