A phrase I have used before in these 'ere reviews is 'there's less to this than meets the eye, and risking devaluing it through overuse I'll use it again about The Limey as it sums the film up extremely well. Stephen Soderbergh is a darling director of cineastes and for all I know he was attempting something far more subtle than what we are ostensibly presented with. If so, it was far, far too subtle for this viewer. I read elsewhere that The Limey is a Soderbergh meditation on retirement, but I don't got for that at all. The Limey is, to be blunt, a straightforward account of how Terence Stamp's limey ex-con travels to Los Angeles to seek revenge for the murder of his daughter.
Why he had decided it was murder - it was, of course, because this is Hollywood life not real life - is never made clear at all. All in all The Limey is a somewhat banal and unconvincing thriller about a man taking his revenge, but Soderbergh attempts to raise it to a higher plain with the use of artsy-fartsy editing. It doesn't come off. The Limey is by no means bad, but neither is it much of an interesting film either. Go and see it by all means as it is entertaining enough, but there are enough films with the same theme as this which are, quite simply, better, artsy-fartsy editing or no artsy-fartsy editing. I might well have missed the point, but if I have, I suspect the point didn't really amount to a row of beans, and, anyway, I really don't care.
Why he had decided it was murder - it was, of course, because this is Hollywood life not real life - is never made clear at all. All in all The Limey is a somewhat banal and unconvincing thriller about a man taking his revenge, but Soderbergh attempts to raise it to a higher plain with the use of artsy-fartsy editing. It doesn't come off. The Limey is by no means bad, but neither is it much of an interesting film either. Go and see it by all means as it is entertaining enough, but there are enough films with the same theme as this which are, quite simply, better, artsy-fartsy editing or no artsy-fartsy editing. I might well have missed the point, but if I have, I suspect the point didn't really amount to a row of beans, and, anyway, I really don't care.