So a few nights ago, I sat down and watched a movie I hadn’t seen in a while: Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey (1999). One from the late nineties hey-day of Steven Soderbergh where he seemed to alternate his relatively larger ventures like Out of Sight (1998) and Erin Brockovich (2000) with smaller, more personal projects that were pretty cool. The Limey is one of these.
Set in Los Angeles, the film follows Terrence Stamp as an aging career criminal who has come to California to investigate the “accidental” death of his daughter and how it connects to a wealthy record mogul. The premise seems pretty cut and dry but what’s really cool, aside from Stamp’s character, is the way it’s pulled off. From the very start of the movie and throughout the bulk of it, quick cuts are made between different time periods during his stay, different conversations with people helping him out, and scenes from his earlier life back in the sixties and seventies. Although these may feel jarring or confusing at first, as you watch, you realize that these cuts aren’t just a random assortment of images being spliced in, but in fact serve a larger purpose.
Really you can think of the whole thing as an exercise in montage. Not Team America montage, mind you, but film school montage where you can give a shot different shades of meaning by putting it next to a shot of something else (Those of you who have actually been to film school may feel free to put me right if I’m using the term incorrectly). As an example, if you have a shot of a guy sitting at a table and then cut to a shot of food, you could surmise the man we previously saw is hungry. There are a number of other basic examples of montage you could come up with, but this is the one that came most readily to my mind.
Essentially, these cuts to different conversations, earlier or later meetings with a certain character, or shots of him simply seated in his plane while flying to or from California help to create additional shades of meaning or give us further information about the characters. It’s a very cool and interesting way to tell a story.
As much as I love this movie though, its form does carry certain drawbacks, mainly for the casual film-watcher. The quick shifts from one time or place to another require the viewer to pay attention to what’s going on, so watching while grading papers or cooking is not on the table. The cuts can also be confusing since it may not always be immediately clear where the viewer is in the plot’s timeline. All things considered, however, if you are the type that has the time to fully focus on a movie like this and don’t mind trying something a little adventurous, then I would highly recommend the movie.
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