'Limey' shoots nothing but stylish blanks

COURTESY ARTISAN Terence Stamp: a rabid member of the NRA, or a pissed-off Brit with a huge chip on his shoulder?

Steven Soderbergh, viewed in a certain light, can be seen as the ultimate chameleon. He changes colors relentlessly as he skitters from psychological drama (Sex, Lies, and Videotape), to Depression memoir (King of the Hill), to schizophrenic disjointedness (Schizopolis), to last year's endlessly enjoyable caper film Out of Sight. With such a diverse history, his choice of The Limey as his latest project is puzzling.

A tale of revenge and the corruption of the rich set in a pastel Los Angeles, the film owes a clear narrative and stylistic debt to John Boorman's classic 1966 film Point Blank, starring Lee Marvin as a one-named criminal out for payback. The Limey can only be compared to its predecessor in all of the ways it has failed to do it justice. Soderbergh's film wanders around in an amiable fashion, filling its 90 minutes, but leaving viewers with little new skin to gaze upon.

The film centers on Dave Wilson (Terence Stamp), an Englishman sprung from prison, who has flown to Los Angeles in order to discover the causes of his daughter Jennifer's death. Stamp plays the prototypical fish out of water, complete with English policeman jokes and the "I don't understand a word you're saying" routine. He's the ultimate cool customer, calmly marching into a warehouse after being unceremoniously thrown out and shooting everyone inside.

Soderbergh uses a modification of the fragmented style he applied to such unique effect in Out of Sight, jumping around freely in time, and circling around images of Jennifer, the cause of Wilson's obsessive quest. By a clever usage of overlapping sound, still photos, and flashed film stock images of Jennifer, The Limey moves in a spiral, constantly circling back while steadily progressing. Though this technique was used superbly in Out of Sight, aiding the story instead of just dressing it up, here Soderbergh's filmmaking consists of nothing more than technique. The pastel colors give the film a beautifully washed-out texture, but it all adds up to very little. The Limey is so coolly matter of fact that there is no room for any sort of emotional involvement—it is remarkably self-contained, referencing dozens of other films but very little emotional reality. Soderbergh has been ambushed by the same trap that so many otherwise talented American directors have fallen into—namely the fact that, gee willikers, it is easy to forget how important it is to have a plot with actual characters—not cardboard cutouts—in between all the virtuosic displays of technique.

There are hints of the film Soderbergh could have made with a better script. Momentary asides by some of the lesser characters constitute the funniest parts of the film, including a conversation among a group of burly bodyguards about the finer points of "the sliding scale," and a hit man (Nicky Katt) whose nonstop running commentary consists of relentless putdowns of everyone crossing his path, including an idea for a sitcom about extras and the all-time filthiest Albert Einstein joke ever told. Another interesting sidetrack, again not fully explored, is the usage of footage of Terence Stamp, from the 1967 film Poor Cow, as the young Terence Stamp in The Limey.

In its casting of Stamp and of Peter Fonda as the shady record producer who is the subject of Wilson's wrath, the film touches on the effects and ravages of time. The Limey seems to propose an alternate history of actors, whose entire lives have been captured on film. But this complex notion, together with its attendant meditation on the psychic fallout of the '60s, as portrayed in the proposed lives of two of the decade's most ubiquitous faces, is only momentarily presented before being tossed away. To make room for what exactly? This film is as hollow as an empty gun barrel, and after Stamp fires off the last of his rounds, you'll wish that Soderbergh had come up with a more vigorous plot to surround his admittedly impressive style.

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