There were two noir tinged British gangster dramas that stood out near the end of 20th century. Both have stand-out performances from veteran Brit actors with heavy accents. If you want a thorough examination of Sexy Beast, with its brilliant and bold Ben Kingsley performance, head on over to Scott Tobias’ New Cult Canon, where he recently covered that one better than I could. The other one, 1999s The Limey, is the better of the two by a slim margin. It is a solid revenge drama in the vein of Get Carter (1971), with a drop dead performance from Terence Stamp. The real star of the show is director Steven Soderbergh and his flair for cinematic experimentation. Much like the sublime sex scene in Out of Sight (finite focus column), the cutting and scene construction is bridged via displaced audio while the video and shot framing is left to wander and drift. This is not really voice-over narration, but rather conversations or scenes taking place which transcend the typical (comfortable) filmic time and space.

In the scene below, an intimate moment of character background on the career criminal Wilson, begins as the usual exposition, but is then intercut with footage from Ken Loach‘s 1967 film Poor Cow. There is no audio used from these repurposed clips, (which have a a neo-realism, documentary feel to them and only increase veracity even as the technique is unothrodox) but rather Terence Stamp’s voice is used to connect what is happening along with a couple of strange shots of Wilson in the car, not lips not moving (perhaps later or earlier in the drive) even though the audio from the scene plays through.

Overall, The Limey has numerous pleasures (not the least of which are supporting roles including Leslie Ann Warren, Luis Guzman and a lizard-like Peter Fonda), but the constant displacement of the dialogue across the visual and temporal space give the film a wholly unique style and feel. One that nicely fits with the aging, fish-out-of-water gangster story.