Review: The Limey
"You're not specific enough to be a person," the young Adhara (Amelia Heinle) tells her older lover Terry Valentine (Peter Fonda). "You're more like a vibe." Ditto for Steven Sodebergh's latest, The Limey, a lean slice of pulpy fun.
Valentine's last miss, a girl named Jenny, supposedly met her death in a car accident. Jenny's dad doesn't buy it. His name is Wilson (Terence Stamp) and he's on a leave of absence from jail. He wants answers and he wants Valentine. He enlists the help of Ed Roel (Luis Guzman), who knew of Jenny's connection to Valentine, and Elaine (Lesley Ann Warren), who was Jenny's confidante.
"Just tell him I'm coming! Tell him I'm fucking coming!" he snarls to Valentine's henchmen. And come he does - he and Ed crash Valentine's party. In a neat set-up, Sodebergh frames Valentine in the foreground mingling with one of his guests; behind him, Wilson headbutts one of his mean and throws him over the railing. Valentine's security guy, Avery (Barry Newman), warns him that Wilson's gunning for him. "Oh, man, this is getting too close to me!" Valentine moans and Avery hires some gunmen to take Wilson down. But Wilson won't be deterred - he will not let this one go.
Once again, Sodebergh employs the low-key visual razzle dazzle in The Limey that he used to great effect in Out of Sight, a similar hardboiled caper with a soft, soul center. Sequences are presented elliptically and unexpectedly - scenes jump forward, back and sideways, the past and the future informing the present. Frames are frozen, drained of sound, taken out of context then put back in. Conversations often occur in voiceover, with the dialogue heard but only the faces seen are still with mouths unmoving - as if the people are holding parallel conversations, one conscious, the other not. Nerviest of all, Sodebergh inserts footage from Ken Loach's Poor Cow, one of Stamp's early works, and uses it to flashback to Wilson's past life. It works beautifully.
The dialogue by Lem Dobbs is priceless. "What are we standing on?" Wilson asks Ed as he looks over the railing of the poolside suspended over a canyon. "Trust," Ed replies. Or an exchange between Elaine and Wilson. "I remember every time I saw her," he says of his daughter. "I watched her grow up. . .in increments." Dobbs also constructs a wonderful monologue for Wilson as he explains his reasons for being in Southern California to a stoic narcotics chief -- the words are all limey slang. In fact, a bit of a running joke throughout the film is how Wilson keeps having to translate himself for people. No one ever understands him but as Elaine notes, "I know what he means."
Stamp and Fonda, those resurgent icons that defined their generations on separate continents, buoy the film with their respective vibes. No one, except perhaps Alain Delon, had a crueler pair of eyes than Stamp. He shades them here with paternal love, regret and, in scenes with Warren, a melancholy longing. Fonda is mellow yellow but digs up currents of menace when necessary. These two engender our sympathies - who do we root for? Who's the good guy? Who's the bad guy? In The Limey, good and evil are not specific. Like everything else, they're a vibe.
The Limey
Directed by: Steven Sodebergh
Written by: Lem Dobbs
Starring: Terence Stamp, Peter Fonda, Lesley Ann Warren, Amelia Heinle, Luis Guzman, Joe Dellasandro, Barry Newman, Nicky Katt, Melissa George, Bill Duke
