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Hugh Grant's recent comedy Mickey Blue Eyes required audiences buy into that particular prejudice. The makers of that flick hoped the idea of placing genteel, mannered Hugh among a bunch of American gangsters would elicit easy laughs.
It's an easy laugh, but a misguided one. Anyone who has ever seen quality British gangster films, such as Get Carter, The Long Good Friday and The Krays knows that the Brit gangster takes a backseat to no one when it comes to bloody-minded violence.
Steven Soderbergh's elegant revenge tale The Limey inverts the premise of Mickey Blue Eyes. An English career criminal comes to America and teaches some candyass Californian crooks a thing or three about viciousness.
In a way, the poor Yanks are at a distinct disadvantage. They assume the silver-haired Englishman Wilson (Terence Stamp) is just some fish 'n' chips-eating senior citizen with a death wish.
They underestimate him, of course. Wilson is highly motivated; he has come to the U.S. to investigate the suspicious death of his daughter, Jenny. When she was alive, she had been the mistress of a laid-back record producer named Valentine (Peter Fonda). In the course of Wilson's investigation -- he cuts a bloody swath through L.A. lowlife -- he learns Valentine is even more unsavoury that most people in the record industry.
This could easily have been a typical revenge tale, except that director Soderbergh (Out Of Sight) is more interested in the nuances of Wilson's quest than he is in the nuts and bolts of screen mayhem. (Wilson's first rampage takes place entirely offscreen.)
He is particularly interested in showing how nemeses Wilson and Valentine are products of the rebellious '60s. Both are self-servers still operating outside the law in the '90s. And when it comes to the crime at hand ... both may be culpable.
As he did in Out Of Sight, Soderbergh refracts the action back and forth through time, sometimes flashing all the way back to the '60s. (In the film's most distinctive narrative device, he utilizes footage of Stamp playing a petty crook named Wilson in Ken Loach's 1967 drama Poor Cow to flesh out Wilson's back story.)
The movie is populated with vivid supporting performances, particularly by Barry Newman as Valentine's ruthless protector, Luis Guzman as Wilson's uneasy L.A. guide, and Leslie Ann Warren as Jenny's friend and drama teacher.
But the movie belongs to Stamp and Fonda. As he did in Ulee's Gold, Fonda impresses as an actor simply by playing an aspect of himself -- a charming, seen-it-all veteran of Hollywood's sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll excess.
Stamp, meanwhile, is a joy to behold. The Cockney actor has had a diverse career, playing a saint in Billy Budd and a comic book villain in Superman. Here, he does his best work in the middle ground.
Sure, his laser eyes are set on kill throughout much of The Limey. But just as Soderbergh expands on the conventions of the revenge thriller, Stamp brings more to the party than Charles Bronson-esque righteousness. By the film's end, he discreetly reveals the tragedy of Wilson's life.
And in so doing, Stamp surgically removes the paradox from the term "angel of vengeance."
(This film is rated R)