Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Movie
Review: The box on this sleeper announces it's "The Perfect Thriller!" according to some well-known critic. I don't agree with him: it's not the perfect thriller. The audience knows who-dunnit long before the final climax, we know what's going to happen to the jerk who-dunnit, we just don't *quite* know how.What "The Limey" *is* is the perfect revenge movie. Terence Stamp plays Wilson, a career criminal from Britain out to avenge his daughter's death. Wilson is a tough, bad man, who I couldn't help liking. He befriends his daughter's friends, who are fairly two-dimensional characters, but are played but such good actors that they stand out in the movie as something more than they are. People who admire Peter Fonda's character from "Easy Rider" will detest the character he plays now-- a washed-up hack riding on the commercialization of the 60s. But again, Fonda plays him with panache. The real star of "The Limey" is the director-- Stephen Soderbergh. His style rings out louder than any chase scene, gun fight or siren. Listen closely for the clue in the score. Also, the flashback scenes are of an actual movie from the 60's ("Poor Cow") starring Stamp as a thief named Wilson. Stylized, interesting, and good.
Rating: 
Summary: a tad OTT
Review: Check out the excellent review by Doug Anderson: Style Chosen Over Content, March 29, 2002. I agree with him 100%. Stamp is a fascinating actor to watch and listen to. He was very memorable in The Hit, especially in his reading of the John Donne sonnet; and he is not like anyone else. Here, he is totally unglamorous, even off-puttingly ugly, yet has a dominant persona. There is something wrong with this film, however, and perhaps it is just the director continually saying to himself and the audience: Look at me! I'm state of the art arty. The style is annoyingly obtrusive. Nearly the whole of the time your attention is completely taken up with the tricksy flashes --- to the point where nothing else seems to matter. Peter Fonda is too willowy for words. He doesn't seem to have enough spine even to cream off a money-laundering narcotics percentage, and it's difficult to envision him as anything more enterprising than a kept toy-boy, by someone like, say, Norma Desmond, or Ayn Rand. Amusing to see Liam from The Big Lebowski falling off the balcony: doesn't this actor ever get to speak? Well, now we know what his job was when he wasn't bowling.
Rating: 
Summary: A Hard, Fast Movie With A Terrific Terence Stamp
Review: When Wilson (Terence Stamp), a hard-edged working-class ex-con, gets off the flight from London to Los Angeles, you know that whoever he's looking for is going to have a tough time. Wilson is after whoever was responsible for the death of his daughter. He goes through people relentlessly and remorselessly until he finally deals with a record producer and drug dealer named Terry Valentine (Peter Fonda) and Valentine's hired protector and partner, Jim Avery (Barry Newman). Along the way he picks up a helper (Luiz Guzman) and meets a retired actress (Lesley Ann Warren) who makes look at himself a little, but not for long.
This is a first-class movie of revenge and retribution, with smart, sharp dialogue, efficient direction and terrific performances all around, especially by Stamp. He plays an aging professional criminal, tough as they come. Stamp at 60 nails the part. There's not an ounce of fat on the guy. His eyes stare coldly. When a big, muscular thug tries to eject him from a party at the hillside home of Valentine, Wilson tosses him off the cantilevered pool to his death. When several thugs rough him up in a warehouse, make fun of his age and toss him out into the parking lot, he gets up, walks to his car, takes up a gun and walks right back. Several of the thugs get hurt.
Fonda also is very good. He plays Valentine as an amoral, self-delusional Hollywood player who is greedy and spineless. Newman is Fonda's muscle, and Newman comes across as almost as tough as Stamp.
An amusing touch is a couple of flashbacks Wilson has, thinking of his daughter when she was a baby and he was with the mother. The flashbacks are taken from a movie Stamp made in 1967. This is typical of the clever directing of Soderbergh. He has produced a movie which I hope won't be forgotten.
The Limey, in my view, is a keeper.
The DVD looks just fine
Rating:
Summary: Time Well Spent
Review: Along the lines of Man on Fire in regards to the kind of "lone soldier" routine. The Limey is not for everyone due to Soderbergh's leaping time-frame editing, and the plot feels thin, but it's very enjoyable and worth the time spent.
The soundtrack for it is really good, too.
Rating:
Summary: badass noir film set in hollywood, doesnt get any better
Review: This movie rocks SO hard cause it starts with The Who song "the seeker". its about this british ex con who just released from prison, terrance stamp. he goes to LA to see who killed his daughter. the constant flashing of clips going back and forth through time is done so well that is it anything but confusing. in it are cool stars like luis guzman who plays stamp's daughters acting class friend in Hollywood. he drives him around the city and gets him a gun and bullets from these ghetto kids at the park.
besides the opening who song, the rest of the music is perfect when it comes up. it is haunting and slowly suspesful music that suggests its 30s and 40s era film-noir influence. the film includes peter fonda, a record company executive mogul who has connections with Los Angeles crime partners. the beatles wrote the song she said she said about peter fonda.
this is a smart film that is truly a treat for its crime genre. the music, dialogue and story are craved by true crime movie lovers everywhere. and this is about as real as the genre gets. palm trees, hollywood, the hills, record executives, guns, blood, ex cons, THE WHO. I rest my case.
Rating:
Summary: A minor masterwork, innit?
Review: This movie is so beautiful. But talkies require more than a pretty picture. It's so lame in so many ways that it hurts. The editing displays an overall attempt to visually salvage the story. The characters aren't believable, interesting or even descent eye-candy. I have enjoyed Stamp's earlier work and I anticipated a great film as he's the lead. What a disappointment. The friends watching it with me bet that I wouldn't finish watching it in one sitting. Although I won the bet, I regret the couple of hours of my life that I will never get back. I guess Mr. Stamp has a large hungry family to feed or something. I'm too lazy to sell this movie on e-bay....Actually, I'm just too kind.
Rating: 
Summary: A Miss
Review: Soderbergh's movies are usually hit or miss for me. I love Out of Sight, Ocean's 11 and of course, Traffic. However, Solaris and now, The Limey are misses for me. There are definite great parts about The Limey, such as Terence Stamp and even Fonda, but I just never really go into the story. I was convinced Stamp's character wanted revenge, but the scenes that were supposed to convince me of his love for his daughter fell flat.
Soderbergh's signature style is definitely there though. As an early work of his, you can really see what he turned that style into later in his better works. The Limey is probably the first movie I didn't care for that I actually bought the soundtrack to, so there's something!
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