Corpus Christi Caller-Times TV/Radio by Elaine Liner, media critic

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Elaine Liner is Caller-Times' media critic. Her columns are published Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. She has been known to occasionally gossip with her readers in the Elaine Liner Forum. Elaine can be reached at linere@caller.com

Wednesday, November 24, 1999

'The Limey' has a visual flair for film noir

Director Steven Soderbergh likes playing with time. He did it in his best film, "sex, lies and videotape," and he does it again with great effect in his latest, "The Limey" (opening today at UA Cine 6).
   Playing film noir style against the blindingly sunlit exteriors of contemporary Los Angeles, "The Limey" flits back and forth from the '90s to the '60s as a recently released career criminal, Dave Wilson (Terence Stamp), searches for the truth behind the death of his daughter Jenny, an aspiring actress. Besides jumping decades to show Wilson as a sleek young rake (Stamp in borrowed footage from the 1967 film "Poor Cow"), Soderbergh and screenwriter Lem Dobbs also hopscotch the storyline in and out of events before and after Jenny's demise in a fiery car crash.
   Wilson is a walking enigma. Speaking in a crude Cockney slang that belies his intelligence, Wilson is alternately tough and tender. He's consumed with guilt for having missed out on most of his daughter's life, but doesn't allow himself to shed a tear over her loss. He is, however, convinced that Jenny's accident was a cover-up for murder and the more he investigates her life in L.A., the more he despises her one-time boyfriend, a wealthy rock promoter named Terry Valentine (Peter Fonda).
   To get closer to Valentine, Wilson befriends two of Jenny's acquaintances, her drama coach (Lesley Ann Warren) and an actor (Luis Guzman) who's straightened out his own life after a prison stretch.
   Wilson and Valentine finally confront each other in a party scene at Valentine's cantilevered mansion. The violence that erupts between these two silver-haired, steely-eyed macho men happens in a surprisingly casual and visually stylish way. In L.A., even hit men retrieve their getaway cars from valet parkers.
   Stamp and Fonda, two of moviedom's best-preserved '60s icons, are terrific as laidback baddies forced into a clash of wills. Warren, smart and beautiful as the helpful drama teacher, generates some real electricity with Stamp.
   Slick and entertaining, "The Limey" is a lush, laconic journey into L.A. noir.
   "The Limey" is rated R for language and violence.

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