"I'm gonna 'ave a butcher's 'round the house."
The Limey
Steven Soderbergh seems to gain more of my respect with every feature of his I see (excluding Ocean's Twelve). First of all let me just say this: I'm a huge fan of extremely long "epic" movies done well, and as such The Deer Hunter, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now Redux, Das Boot and Lawrence Of Arabia rank among my favourite films. I'm rarely as impressed by 90-minute short-features because there are so few which can, in this limited running time, achieve the same heights without extra time for development of plot, character etc. to successfully develop its themes to the depth of a not-drawn-out 3-hour film. That doesn't mean it can't happen. Reservoir Dogs in my opinion does more in its 90 minutes than any other 90 minute film I've seen and I believe it to be a superb movie. On the other hand, films like Run Lola Run and Punch Drunk Love, while excellent in their own right, don't really leave me with enough to take away from them to consider them to be "great."
The Limey is a film which I could praise extensively if I was so inclined to sit here and do so, but at the end of the day for all of its individual achievements (including one of the most brilliant opening 15-minutes of any movie ever) it is quite limited as to what it achieves as a whole. It's essentially an intriguing but brief glimpse into the world the film creates, a fleeting glance at the lead character in a small chunk of his life from the start to the finish of his attempts to take revenge against the man he believes is responsible for his daughter's death. The plot is extremely simple. The guy he's after is guilty. The protagonist tries to track him down. Does so then decides he won't kill the guy unless that guy knows why he is being killed. Stuff happens. This stuff is paced amazingly well, following a "rhythm" (constructed primarily of course through its use of music and editing) which is perhaps more natural than that of any film I've seen these last few months. In fact, I encourage Simon, Dennis, Sonny and anyone else reading this who may want to be a filmmaker to see this film for it's editing style if nothing else: a very unique approach which in some ways can be seen to have spawned that used in Traffic (though with a more radical, less mainstream approach in The Limey) which sees moments of past, present and future cut into the middle of scenes as though the film is a memory within a restless mind, looking at where something will eventually lead, how something links to something else, a moment of a conversation similar to another, or simply a moment of pause where a character's face says something on it's own while the dialogue continues in the soundtrack. All in all this movie is a really good for what it is, and it's certainly immensely entertaining and well-written. But it's not exactly very ambitious and like many 90-minute films I guess that's where it falls short in my eyes, probably because of what I personally look to take out of a film.
Overall I'd rank it like this amongst Soderbergh's other works that I've seen:
Traffic B+ (4/5)
Ocean's Eleven B+ (4/5)
The Limey B (3.5/5)
Erin Brockovich B- (3/5)
Solaris C+ (3/5)
Oceans' Twelve D- (0.5/5)
This is a VERY STRONG "B" to the extent that a second viewing could push it into "B+" territory. Anyways, according to IMDB this is the weakest of the five movies I rented (7.1/10) so if I enjoy the other four more I'll be a very happy lad by the end of the week.
Steven Soderbergh seems to gain more of my respect with every feature of his I see (excluding Ocean's Twelve). First of all let me just say this: I'm a huge fan of extremely long "epic" movies done well, and as such The Deer Hunter, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now Redux, Das Boot and Lawrence Of Arabia rank among my favourite films. I'm rarely as impressed by 90-minute short-features because there are so few which can, in this limited running time, achieve the same heights without extra time for development of plot, character etc. to successfully develop its themes to the depth of a not-drawn-out 3-hour film. That doesn't mean it can't happen. Reservoir Dogs in my opinion does more in its 90 minutes than any other 90 minute film I've seen and I believe it to be a superb movie. On the other hand, films like Run Lola Run and Punch Drunk Love, while excellent in their own right, don't really leave me with enough to take away from them to consider them to be "great."
The Limey is a film which I could praise extensively if I was so inclined to sit here and do so, but at the end of the day for all of its individual achievements (including one of the most brilliant opening 15-minutes of any movie ever) it is quite limited as to what it achieves as a whole. It's essentially an intriguing but brief glimpse into the world the film creates, a fleeting glance at the lead character in a small chunk of his life from the start to the finish of his attempts to take revenge against the man he believes is responsible for his daughter's death. The plot is extremely simple. The guy he's after is guilty. The protagonist tries to track him down. Does so then decides he won't kill the guy unless that guy knows why he is being killed. Stuff happens. This stuff is paced amazingly well, following a "rhythm" (constructed primarily of course through its use of music and editing) which is perhaps more natural than that of any film I've seen these last few months. In fact, I encourage Simon, Dennis, Sonny and anyone else reading this who may want to be a filmmaker to see this film for it's editing style if nothing else: a very unique approach which in some ways can be seen to have spawned that used in Traffic (though with a more radical, less mainstream approach in The Limey) which sees moments of past, present and future cut into the middle of scenes as though the film is a memory within a restless mind, looking at where something will eventually lead, how something links to something else, a moment of a conversation similar to another, or simply a moment of pause where a character's face says something on it's own while the dialogue continues in the soundtrack. All in all this movie is a really good for what it is, and it's certainly immensely entertaining and well-written. But it's not exactly very ambitious and like many 90-minute films I guess that's where it falls short in my eyes, probably because of what I personally look to take out of a film.
Overall I'd rank it like this amongst Soderbergh's other works that I've seen:
Traffic B+ (4/5)
Ocean's Eleven B+ (4/5)
The Limey B (3.5/5)
Erin Brockovich B- (3/5)
Solaris C+ (3/5)
Oceans' Twelve D- (0.5/5)
This is a VERY STRONG "B" to the extent that a second viewing could push it into "B+" territory. Anyways, according to IMDB this is the weakest of the five movies I rented (7.1/10) so if I enjoy the other four more I'll be a very happy lad by the end of the week.
posted by Steve @ 2:47 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home