The Limey [1999]

Crime

Stamp, Terrence	Wilson
Fonda, Henry	Terry Valentine
Guzman, Luis

Director

Steven Soderbergh

Two icons of 60s cinema, Terence Stamp and Peter Fonda, go head-to-head in Steven Soderbergh's stylish reworking of the lone avenger theme. Stamp plays Wilson, an ageing Cockney villain newly out of jail, who arrives in Los Angeles to ask some awkward questions. His beloved daughter, mistress of powerful rock promoter Terry Valentine (Fonda), has died in a car crash; but Wilson's far from convinced it was an accident. With his gaunt, grim features and sparse white hair, Stamp's a dead ringer for the angel of death. Or maybe, as Soderbergh hints with some intricate flashback and flash-forward cutting, the whole story is a dying man's dream of vengeance. Echoes of Get Carter and Point Blank aren't far to seek. Though it's tense, gripping and often funny--Wilson's rhyming-slang dialogue bemuses every American he meets--The Limey is shot through with an aching sense of loss and wasted years. The final showdown between Wilson and Valentine feels like the epitaph of an era once rich in dreams. Some of the film's most poignant moments are its "flashbacks" to Wilson's younger days, which are actually clips from Ken Loach's 1967 movie Poor Cow, featuring the twentysomething Stamp, insolently and heart-breakingly beautiful. --Philip Kemp