This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

The Limey sees a familiar tale told in an unfamiliar way. The basic plot concerns a hardened, grizzly Englishman named Wilson who has just been release from prison and is seeking vengeance for his daughter's apparent murder. A career criminal, Wilson hasn't exactly been keeping in touch, and as the story unfurls we gradually discover the darker dealings of Jenny's life alongside him. In simple terms, the film is about a father's search for answers and the truth, but much of that search isn't a physical one, but a dive back into forgotten memories and pasts, circling back onto itself. Soderbergh's direction elevates this process into one tinged with bitterness and regret. You can spot this almost immediately with Wilson's first interrogee, Jenny's friend Eduardo. Shot simply this might just be exposition, but Soderbergh and editor Sarah Flack cut up their conversation over three different locations, with the sounds of their voices bridging over the scenes. An encounter with another old friend, Elaine, is similarly fractured, their voices flung over physical locations with seamless transitions. Wilson is dealing with a flurry of new and often contradictory information about the events that lead to his daughter's death, absorbed over many conversations. Fragments of the truth are all that he receives; why should it be relayed in a straightforward way? Nearing the true cause of his mission, Wilson's imagination goes into overdrive, and with it the audience's objective perspective. The camera assumes an omniscient view from which we see all possibilities, overlapping different outcomes. When Wilson sees his target at a party, Soderbergh minimises all background noise into a distant buzz, and slows down the focus on his unfurling pistol. The shot, and subsequent spray of blood, is stylised violence, something out of a music video, and the immediate cut draws us back into reality. Yet Soderbergh gradually strips back the artifice until finally we are convinced that Wilson has really decided to avenge Jenny in the thick of the party, and fools us for a third time by cutting back to Eduardo pulling him away. We can feel his emotions caving in and compressing onto the scene, his desire for revenge filtered through the camera's eye, becoming less fantastical by the second. Terrence Stamp's Wilson is a lean, world-wearied brand of fury, a mind focused solely on one thing. He brushes off glancing blows with the same stony face and piercing blue eyes throughout, as if everything was just a matter of time. And it is. Bundled out of the drug dealer's garage, the camera holds the wide shot, knowing what is to come, and observes Wilson drawing a pistol, and storming back into the room. Bang, and then five or six more. The sequence has the same startling immediacy of an early Scorsese or Tarantino, and none of the later juvenility from the latter. See too how the camera almost selectively ignores later acts of violence in a matter-of-fact way, remaining in shallow focus while Wilson upends a security guard over the railing of Terry Valentine's hilltop manor. Intercut with those harsh blows of gritty violence are flashes of a younger Wilson taken from Ken Loach's directorial debut Poor Cow, a fresher-faced Stamp and a mere petty thief. The entire film drips with 90s malaise, complete with tinkling score and a washed up 60s icon in Peter Fonda, who has 'upgraded' into the higher life but spends much of his time lamenting the loss of his glory days and traversing the endless American roads on a shiny chrome motorcycle. The past worms and burrows itself into Wilson's mind, a never-ending reminder of the life he chose and the impact on those around him. It begins to invade the film form itself; an eye-line match sees Wilson look up at a younger Jenny, footage spliced to mimic the two meeting each other's gaze. These 'flashbacks' seem to resemble generic recollections, faded and grainy, but Wilson is more than just reminiscing. He's investigating the origins of these sins, pondering his own conscience. The bright spotlight fixates on his daughter's face, symbolic of his own search for truth and ultimately forgiveness. Did he find it on that beach? We can only hope so.

I wrote my summary line after reading reviews from people who hated this movie. I guess if you can only appreciate slam-bang zombie apocalypses then you might be bored by "The Limey," but most grownups will probably enjoy it. (Don't get me wrong, I like zombie apocalypses too, just not all the time.)Others have already talked about the plot, which I found believable enough for a movie. The super-hot Terence Stamp plays Wilson perfectly, and I loved how the director used Stamp's performance in "Poor Cow" as a "frontstory" for his relationship with his daughter Jenny, played, only in photos, by Melissa George.The rest of the cast is also pretty good, including Adhara, Terry Valentine's nymphet girlfriend, a young Denise Richards lookalike named Amelia Heinle who seems as if she might be able to act were she not always either in a pool or a bathtub. Peter Fonda was eerily creepy as an amoral record producer whose main attraction is his money. (In one of the movie's best lines, Adhara says to him: "You're not specific enough to be a person. You're more like--a vibe." So true.)A special shout-out to Nicky Katt, who--no pun intended--killed it as a hapless hit-man. A small part, but one of the little joys of the movie.Another joy: Terry Valentine's two gorgeous houses, one in LA with a pool cantilevered over an open canyon, and one at Big Sur. if I'm reading the box office right, the budget for this movie was $9 million, but it only grossed about $4 million. Truly sad if so.

This is a beautiful piece of filmmaking that rewards repeated viewings. Luis Guzman and Lesley Ann Warren--two old pros who make anything they appear in better--are wonderful here, understated but adding so much to every scene they appear in. And Terence Stamp's performance here (like Michael Caine's in Get Carter) is a template for every Brit gangster that came after him. That said, I couldn't get past the fact that Stamp's character would let Terry Valentine live in the climactic scene. Perhaps it strengthens the movie from a dramatic standpoint (such as Harvey Keitel giving the money away in Bad Lieutenant) but why in the world would he do it?

When I sat to enjoy The Limey I was anticipating Terence Stamp's steel-cold stare and Cliff Martinez's score. I was not disappointed, both bring class to this low profile formulaic story of a little mad father out to get the big bad man responsible for the death of his loved one(s).Now I was not the least impressed by Soderbergh's experimental storytelling. Editing is surely creative here. I understand that scrapping a whole backstory about hit men may well have forced it. But I do feel the visual rhythm runs against the whole noir atmosphere. Basically emotion rises from within a shot, action from editing, hence too much editing here prevents emotion (and tension) to settle.In the end you feel Terence Stamp was wasted in an average story where an artsy director favoured style over substance. Soderbergh's approach is actually interesting, only it turns out counter-productive.