Having carried away Oscars for one of the two 2000 films for which he was nominated (Traffic; Erin Brokovich was the other) Steven Soderbergh has achieved mainstream Hollywood acceptance. I was suspicious of him before he received such an accolade. I blame his parents for the "lite" spelling of his name, but I blame him for the very suspicious racial politics of "Traffic" (on which see my epinion). Although, once upon a time, I was one of many impressed by "sex, lies, and videotape," now the title seems better than the film. And remaking "Ocean's Eleven." What he wants to do with his clout is remake a throwaway Rat Pack flick???

I didn't get around to seeing the 1999 film "The Limey" (or "Out of Sight") primarily because I remembered all too well how awful "Kafka," a previous Soderbergh film from a screenplay by Lem Dobbs and with music by Cliff Martinez, was. Among other distinctions, it might contain the worst Alec Guiness performance of any film. Its only redeeming feature is some location shots of Prague.

Fortunately, "The Limey" is more like the technical overkill of "Traffic" than the boring morass of "Kafka." I think that "The Limey" is more fascinating for someone like me who saw the 1960s films of Terrence Stamp at an impressionable age, and remembers what Peter Fonda aptly called Stamp's "impenetrable mystique" from Pasolini's "Teorema," Wyler's "The Collector," Schliesinger's "Far from the Madding Crowd" (and Fellini's "Toby Dammit" and the version of "Billy Budd" Peter Ustinov directed which introduced Stamp) rather than knowing him (if at all) from "Superman" and/or the "Star Wars" prequel and/or "The Adventure of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert." His hair was not always white!

I have to admit that I have never seen the Stamp 60s film most relevant to "The Limey," Ken Loach's "Poor Cow" from which bits have been integrated as flashbacks in "The Limey" (though I easily recognize the Donovan song ("Colours") he sings bits of in both the old and the new footage). Stamp played a thief named Dave (with no last name specified, though publicity material on "The Limey" said that the character's name in the 1967 film was "Dave Wilson" and this has been repeated in many reviews, including epinions ones of the DVD, though Dobbs and Soderbergh discuss the mistake).

"The Limey" very consciously resonates with the iconic baggage of Peter Fonda (who tells a motorcycling accident story), Barry Newman (driving as in "Vanishing Point), and Warhol factory star Joe Dallesandro. Lesley Ann Warren was too bouncy and Disneyesque during the 1960s to have such resonances, and much of her part probably stayed on the cutting room floor (this is probably only a metaphor now...). It is an unusual "thriller" in which most of the major characters are over 50.

As in "Traffic," Soderbergh has a penchant for monochromatic hyper-filtered images, particularly blue and sepia images. (I'm pretty sure that "Poor Cow" was in black and white rather than shades of brown.) And like "Traffic," the editing is so ostentatiously dazzling that it disguises hackneyed plots and underdeveloped characters.

Plot (If you haven't seen the film, skip this section)

Let's start with the story. I find it hard to believe that Wilson would get out of the (drug or whatever) warehouse with a gun. I went back and watched carefully the scene in which he buys a gun on a playground, and a gun is taken away from him.

And while on the subject of guns, this man was a professional thief (though since he was imprisoned at least three times, not all that accomplished a thief) in a country where guns are not as ubiquitous as the US. How did he come by his abilities as a pistol marksman? And the "natural" (that is, American) recourse to firearms? First recourse, that is.

Would someone whose criminal background is one of stealth, go in with his mouth blazing and so gratuitously provoke someone from whom he wants information? Toshiro Mifune's masterless samurais wouldn't. Even "Beat" Kitano in the bloodbath of "Brother" starts interactions with some politesse! Wilson is not a psychopathic killer. Probably, he has not been a killer at all.

Similarly, even if he is fantasizing about gunning down Terry Valentine (Peter Fonda), would he dispose of the security guard as he does (not even getting into the amount of dead weight involved)? He wants to ask Valentine about the death of his daughter and has a chance. Why doesn't he take it? He might not be satisfied with the answer he got, but he goes to a great deal of trouble for a far less certain chance to ask.

Why do Ed (Luis Guzmán) and Elaine (Warren) put themselves at levels of risk they understand better than Wilson does? Neither of them likes Terry Valentine, the rich but seemingly financially overextended music promoter with whom Wilson's daughter, Jenny, had been living at the time of her death in a fiery single-car crash from a ridge road at 2 a.m. As friends of Jenny's (would-be actor and voice coach, respectively), they knew her father was not a part of her life. They knew her better than her father, who just came out of a nine-year imprisonment, did. There is something compelling about his pain and dignity, but Ed and Elaine are not naive about the power of money in LA.

Then there is the DEA surveillance that saves Elaine and Wilson from the goons (Joe Dallesandro and Nicky Katt) whom Avery (Newman), Valentine's "security consultant" hired to off him. This is very deus ex machina. I have to admit that I didn't mind, because the scene with the DEA overseer (Bill Duke) is so hilarious. (Guzmân is one of the heroic nonwhite DEA agents in "Traffic," so valorizing DEA devotion is another continuity between "The Limey" and "Traffic.")

I can accept that in the climactic battle he keeps going (thinking of Rasputin) and that Valentine is a bad shot and that Avery is too infuriated at Terry Valentine's final betrayal to shoot Wilson.

Characters

I've already noted that Wilson implausibly recruits Ed and Elaine to his loony enterprise. They do not get any chance to develop as characters, but are somewhat bemused auxiliaries.

The relationship between the squeamish, weak Terry Valentine and Avery, who has been getting him out of and through trouble for years, is quite plausible. The DEA officer manages to establish a character in his one scene. (It helps that he gets the best line: "What I don't understand is every motherf_cking word your say."

Stamp's Wilson is a character with obvious depths (aided by that iconic "impenetrable mystique"). His regrets are many. In combat, he is relentless, and his quest is pretty crazy, but he is appreciative of the help he gets (in contrast to the weaselly Valentine).

Jenny is dead, so has few chances to establish a character (though I don't see the need for so many repetitions of her as a young girl on the beach with a circle of light moving up her face...). But it irritates me that there is no mention of her mother. The often-imprisoned father, who was "like a ghost" in her life only watching her grow up "in increments" with lapses behind bars between the increments, was not her only parent, but the viewer learns nothing of the woman who must have been important to Jenny, even if she was not to Wilson!

Flashy techniques

I've already mentioned the highly color-filtered photography of many scenes (though others use available light), and that obtrusive editing is frequent. Really obtrusive: perhaps not quite as many cuts as "Moulin Rouge" and not so structured as those in "Memento," but those two current films (and "Traffic") are certainly good preparation for viewing "The Limey."

Soderbergh filmed one conversations between Stamp and Warren and one between Stamp and Guzmán in four locations. He (and editor Sarah Flack) then spliced together parts of the takes from different locations so that the words flow but the images jump from location to location. Wilson's aria of British slang to the DEA agent also has continuous sound with many (in my view entirely gratuitous) image cuts. In the comment track, Soderbergh opines that audiences easily accept such unfamiliar visual discontinuity and "don't notice it." This seems disingenuous to me. Surely, it is there to be noticed!

When Terry Valentine is first mentioned, there is a montage (flash forwards)--what Soderbergh termed a "trailer" of images.

The echo to the too-often-repeated flashback to Jenny on the beach of the light from the airplane window moving up Wilson's made me roll my eyes, though I really liked the dialogue between Wilson and the female passenger beside him.

Cliff Martinez’s score is not flashy, but a jazzier Eric Satie, which is no doubt an homage to French New Wave films (maybe "Escalator to the Gallows"?), in which jump-cuts were all but standard.

DVD extras

Besides three trailers and fimographies of the principals, there are two commentary tracks, both of which I found very interesting. In the conversation between director Soderbergh and his recurrent screen-writer Dobbs, it takes a while to figure out which voice is whose. The conversation is very edgy. Dobbs complains rightly about Jenny's picture commanding the main stairway of Valentine's house. He also complains about various cuts of the back-stories of characters. He sounds petulant and strident at times, and is parried gracefully by Soderbergh, though I think that Dobbs is right about a number of the decisions Soderbergh made with which Dobbs disagrees.

The other audio track is also interesting, but is much more recollections of the 1960s by Stamp, Fonda, Newman, Dallesandro, and Warren that was elicited from interviews. That is, they are not talking to each other, but snippets from interviews are included, usually with very little connection to the scenes of the film.

Although Stamp speaks slowly and enunciates very clearly, in the film (not in the actors' audio track) he has a Cockney accent that some may find difficult to understand (though, I suspect, it is the British slang that is more of a problem). There is supposed to be subtitling in English, but in the scenes I checked, there was nothing except an occasional appearance of the name "Terrence Stamp."

Conclusion

Most of the violence occurs offscreen or in the background. There are aspects of the story I have trouble accepting. However, the film has some impressive performances, and some fancy techniques. I find the ending(s) very satisfying. Just when I thought I was in Peckinpagh territory, there were some surprises...

The film is certainly essential to any fan of Terrence Stamp's work from the 1960s (and/or of "Meetings with Remarkable Men"). It does interesting things with Peter Fonda's image, though fans of the 1960s' Peter Fonda might well choose to avoid the film.

With such visual complexity, and with a discussion between an articulate director and an articulate writer on the comment track, I can recommend the DVD more highly than I would have recommended the film if I had gotten around to seeing it in a theater in 1999.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age