The Limey (1999) July 22, 2007
Posted by jackal in : Films , trackback“Tell me … Tell me! Tell me about Jenny!”
With those furiously spoken disembodied words, The Limey opens to blackness. The Who’s thunderous “The Seeker” strikes up, and the speaker emerges from the darkness at the start of his tale, out of focus, the memories taking time to coalesce. After a few moments Wilson, ageing London gangster, becomes discernible, striding out of LAX airport and into the warm, unfamiliar California sunshine. As Wilson, Terence Stamp burns up the screen, blue eyes firing like diamonds in a face so gracefully weather-worn you feel he could strike a match off his cheek. Wilson is a man with a purpose, and you’d better not get in his way.
Wilson picks up a cab at the airport and travels in silence, his thoughts humming in his head while his voice hums on the soundtrack. Passing traffic barely registers. Wilson is fresh out of prison, an unreformed London gangster, one of the old-school. He’s lived a violent life, full of high times and long stretches, but it’s a different world now, one that doesn’t recognise him, let alone afford him respect. When Wilson buys a gun in LA, the dealers are kids, still in high school. Wilson’s confusion and shame at involving children in his business registers potently on Stamp’s face. Wilson’s one true happiness in life was his daughter Jenny (Melissa George). She grew up well in spite of him, moved to LA, became involved with a wealthy record producer, and died in a fiery car crash. Wilson doesn’t believe it was an accident. He’s out to find the truth, he’s a man with nothing to lose, and he doesn’t fuck around.
From the very outset, director Steven Soderbergh and his editor Sarah Flack tell the film like a jigsaw puzzle; it’s disjointed, carefully constructed to be almost chaotic but always provide the viewer with the information needed. This is Wilson’s story as he remembers it: fractured into moments, pieces of one conversation mixed with another, fused to the memories they evoke, bringing back old regrets and treasured days. Flashbacks to Wilson’s youth are taken from Ken Loach’s 1967 film Poor Cow, in which Stamp played a thief who ends up in prison. It’s an unusual move, and one that works beautifully. We cut frequently to Wilson, seated on a plane, his face serene, yet sad. To begin, we can only assume this is Wilson before his arrival; only as the story reaches its end does it become apparent that he’s on his way home, looking back over his trip.
Music and sound are used expertly in the movie, with Wilson’s reminiscences scored to near-silence, broken only by the same few haunting notes played over and over, together with Stamp’s own indistinct humming and the tinkling of windchimes. It’s haunting, lyrical and effective.
Wilson hooks up with Eduardo, an old friend of Jenny’s from her acting class. Soderbergh favourite Luis Guzman plays the sidekick, an unusually dramatic role for him, and his turn is understated and genuine. Wilson and Eduardo are strangers from different worlds, they barely speak the same language, and yet both have one thing in common: a sense of duty to the girl they both knew and cared for. Bonded by this, they become a most unlikely and oddly touching team, and the culture clash between cockney gangster and semi-reformed LA crook also gives Soderbergh opportunity to inject a little levity to the script:
Wilson: “I’m going to have a butchers round.”
Eduardo: “Who you gonna butcher?!”
Wilson (patiently): “Butcher’s hook: look.”
From Eduardo’s information, Wilson learns the name of the man Jenny was involved with: Terry Valentine (Peter Fonda), and the location of a depot where Valentine’s associates operate. Wilson strolls in off the street, confuses the obviously shady workers long enough to find Valentine’s address, then takes a thorough beating with calm indifference. With Wilson dumped on the street outside, Soderbergh executes the film’s most memorable shot: Stamp, emerging from below frame, untangles his battered frame and stands tall; he removes a pistol hidden in his waistband and resolutely plods back into the depot. Shots ring out; there are cries for help. As the camera, still without cutting, moves in on the building, a sole survivor flees as Stamp emerges, his face twisted with rage: “You tell him! You tell him I’m coming! TELL HIM I’M FUCKING COMING!”
News of this gets back to Terry Valentine through his no-nonsense security advisor Avery (Barry Newman). Standing on the overhang of his grand house in the LA hills, a beautiful starlet swimming in the pool, with “King Midas in Reverse” jangling on the soundtrack, the handsome and well-groomed Valentine looks like the man who has everything. Fonda is perfectly cast opposite Stamp: two once-golden 60s icons, playing rivals in a film that dwells on themes of age, memories and regrets, men past their time.
Fonda makes Terry Valentine everything Wilson is not: relaxed, reflectful, mellow; yet underneath is unrest, even a sense of desperation. Valentine’s high days are long behind him, the sun is setting, and he’s clinging on by his fingertips. In that first scene, Valentine stands in twilight, the warm California sun fading below the horizon, and the implication is clear. Later, there’s a quiet little scene in which he describes the halcyon days of the 1960s to his young girlfriend; Fonda is subdued, mournful and quite wonderful.
Valentine holds a party the next day, into which Wilson and Eduardo crash. In a striking sequence, Wilson’s repeated fantasies about stepping up and shooting Valentine dead are played out, editing together multiple angles of Wilson’s revolver swooping out like a coiled snake. Wilson won’t go through with it yet, however, telling Eduardo: “he’s got to know why.”
The plot thickens: Valentine authorises Avery to hire hitmen, but they fail. Wilson discovers from the authorities that Valentine is suspected of laundering money for drug dealers. As the net closes in on the panicked music mogul, he flees to his vacation home along the coast, but Wilson is on his tail.
Intertwined with this, somewhere in a quiet alleyway just off the main story, Eduardo leads Wilson to Jenny’s acting coach, Elaine (Lesley Anne Warren). A calm and quiet person, she is not a natural mesh with Wilson, yet they develop a careful friendship; through their talks he is able to put his memories into order, mull over the possibilities and family life he missed out on, even though he doesn’t regret his choices. It’s in these quiet moments that Stamp’s faultless performance is at its peak. When he allows a tiny crack in Wilson’s armour, a melancholic smile for the daughter whose childhood he watched largely from behind prison bars, Stamp’s delivery is heartbreaking.
Elaine: “Do you even remember the last time you saw her?”
Wilson: “I remember every time I saw her. I watched her grow up … in increments.”
*SPOILERS BELOW*
It’s this same, almost serene Wilson, who ultimately emerges at the film’s climax. Having cornered the terrified Terrry Valentine after a bloody and superbly filmed gunfight, the film’s first, then-detached words are finally placed in context. “Tell me,” Stamp snarls like a wolf, “tell me about Jenny!”
The now pathetic, cowering figure of Terry Valentine tells the whole guilty tale. Wilson could, and perhaps should - at least by his code - kill him, but instead he steps back, his mind overflowing with conflicting memories and emotions. Finally, without explanation, he walks away. Whatever he took from Valentine’s story, it was enough to complete his cathartic journey.
The Limey is a film I didn’t fully appreciate upon its initial cinema release; I don’t think I was expecting something so stylised or non-linear in its narrative. Since then I’ve watched it three or four times, and it grows in my estimation with each repeat viewing. I’d now say that it’s a minor classic: rich, haunting, beautifully photographed and with a magnificent central performance from Terence Stamp.
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