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www.nitrateonline.com - : Who would have thought that Steven Soderbergh, the man who basically invented the U.S. indie boom, would make films like the weird, deeply fragmented Schizopolis right before turning out the zesty, perhaps brilliant genre films Out Of Sight and now The Limey? He is turning into one of the U.S.'s most unpredictable, consistently interesting filmmakers, and his latest film heartily re-enforces this assertion of mine. It displays the same sense of narrative efficiency that marked Out Of Sight, and also features odd little stylistic quirks that, like the freeze frames and 70s soundtrack of his last film, remind the viewer that it's all just a movie. Both of these films (and I think The Limey has a lot more in common with Out Of Sight than with any of Soderbergh's other films) always threaten to go careening off into the overly arty or pretentious, but miraculously Soderbergh keeps them both under control. He does this, in both films, through keeping a very close eye on his actors, keeping them focussed and never allowing them to ''go ironic,'' allowing the viewer to develop emotional attachment to the situations. The Limey is a clever, stylistically aggressive film, but it never seeks the kind of distance or snideness that so many of the filmmakers inspired by Sex, Lies And Videotape have, to the peril of American film as a whole, embraced. more...
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Critic Reviews
