This weekend, my choices of American Beauty, The Insider,
Bringing Out the Dead, and Being John Malkovich were all delayed
because I feared Stephen Soderbergh's "The Limey" would
be leaving the local theater. If it does, it will have left too
soon.
Terence Stamp plays "The Limey," a British convict
just released who comes to Los Angeles to investigate the death
of his estranged daughter. Stamp was last seen briefly in the
Star Wars film as some kind of ambassador (he had fewer lines
than Samuel L. Jackson), and more flamboyantly in "Priscilla,
Queen of the Desert" where he played a very tough
transvestite. You may also recognize him as the nemesis to
Michael Douglas in "Wall Street."
In "The Limey," Stamp's tough guy patter is both
dated and foreign. It often smacks of Bob Hoskins in "The
Long Good Friday", though, thankfully, Stamp is more
intelligible. His search leads him to several characters, most
interesting being Peter Fonda, as a record executive who made his
name repackaging the 60s sound, and Barry Newman, Fonda's dubious
associate (a 70s American television staple as "Petrocelli"
the lawyer).
Fonda's role as a perpetuator of the myth of the 60s is
correspondent to the film's use of Stamp (a 60s icon who
disappeared with the decade), and the film is an easy examination
of two men lost in the 90s. Better, Soderbergh packages the
portrayals in a taut crime story.
As in last year's "Out of Sight," Soderbergh
develops his characters by brief conversations, not by their
routes or actions. "The Limey" is decidedly more
laconic than "Out of Sight." It also has none of the
sexual tension of Clooney and Lopez. Instead, Soderbergh gives
Stamp great latitude to play out the macho rage of an absent
father. His anger is at the loss of his daughter, though his
memories are but a few snippets and stories (he was in prison for
a great period of her upbringing). Stamp embodies father as
figure, and his inner demon is not so much what he lost, but what
he squandered.
Where Stamp is driven, Fonda is resigned. He senses that his
time is past, and his desperation is palpable. His weakness is
subtle (his conversations with a lover 30 years his junior are
wonderfully pained, the scripted equivalent of a middle-aged man
in a Porsche, a head mottled by Rogaine, and "The Byrds"
on the CD, as he waxes about his past, only to be met with "Oh,
I think you've told me that story").
Both Stamp and Fonda are nostalgiac for the 60s, the former
because it was a time of his daughter, his marriage and his pre-criminal
amends, and the latter because it has burnished in his mind as a
golden moment. But the love of the time has distorted both men,
and the basic story is merely backdrop to understanding of these
points of view.
Soderbergh is also much more aggressive in his use of
timelines, to great effect. We are regularly shown snippets of
things to come or things past, all of which contributes to the
them of two men lost in time.
This is a fine film, wholly at odds with the forced action and
manic jabber of the genre. One of my favorites of the year.
