“The Limey”: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

I’ve been aware of Terence Stamp since 1962, when he played the title role in a film adaptation of a Herman Melville novella, Billy Budd. The part, Stamp’s first in an American film, is that of a young 19^th century sailor whose optimism and blond beauty have tragic consequences. For Stamp himself the consequences were excellent, including an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe award. But he certainly didn’t confine himself to playing innocents, as his dangerous allure in The Collector (1965) made quite clear.

 Personally I associate Stamp, who died this past August at age 87, with two widely different roles. In 1967’s Far from the Madding Crowd, a lavish period film based on a novel by Thomas Hardy, he played a dashing military man who woos and weds the tempestuous Bathsheba Everdene (Julie Christie), only to squander her holdings and break her heart. In 1994, he was unrecognizable in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, a riotous flick about drag queens gallivanting through the Australian outback in a colorful tour bus. In this cult favorite, Stamp’s role was that of a transgender woman. It’s been revealed since his death that he had recently completed all of his scenes for Priscilla, Queen of the Desert 2, a film about the challenges of old age that’s currently still in production.

 In reading obits for Stamp, I came across reference to a Steven Soderbergh thriller I’d never seen. I’ve been a great admirer of Soderbergh’s diverse body of work ever since I saw his poignant breakthrough indie, Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989). Nine years later, he was widely recognized for Out of Sight, a Florida-set crime comedy. Based on an Elmore Leonard novel, it elicited sexy, stellar performances from George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. One year later, Soderbergh was still working in the crime genre. Stamp was the star of his The Limey, a film about a British Cockney crook who’s also a bereaved father. Fresh out of prison for the umpteenth time, he hightails it to L.A. to investigate his daughter’s sudden death somewhere off Mulholland Drive.  

 I’d hardly call The Limey a comedy, but there’s humor (of the fish-out-of-water variety) to be found in this rough and tumble crook experiencing the glitz of Hollywood, a place where no one seems to understand a word he says. His first contact is a down-to-earth Latino (Luis Guzman) who knew his pretty young daughter from (natch!) an acting class.  Various deadly escapades in the warehouses of Downtown L.A. lead him eventually to a slick music producer with a fabulous home in the hills. He’s played by a toothy Peter Fonda, who looks like an updated version of his hipster role in Roger Corman’s L.S.D.-laced The Trip (1967). He’s fabulously wealthy, he likes keeping beautiful young women on hand, he throws lavish parties, and it’s quite clear he’s up to no good. Somehow Stamp’s Wilson, while eluding both Fonda’s goons and some not-entirely-on-the-up-and-up drug agents, manages to accomplish his personal mission without ever getting his clothes mussed.

 Soderbergh has always been big on experimentation, and The Limey is shot and edited in a flashy style that some might find distracting. Nor is this film sexy in the way Out of Sight proved to be. (Who can forget Clooney and Lopez, on opposite sides of the law, trapped together in very close quarters in the trunk of a car?) But I enjoyed seeing Terence Stamp in a different phase of his long career, playing a man taciturn and tough, but a loving father all the same.