The Limey (1999; directed by Steven Soderbergh)

It's a small but exact subgenre in Hollywood, the story of a man who comes to town and takes apart a whole mob, member by member, because he has a grudge against them. The template is "Point Blank," starring Lee Marvin, and the most recent entry (before this one) was Brian Helgeland's disappointing "Payback" (reportedly taken away from him when Mel Gibson decided his character was a little too close to the dark side). One rule of the genre, by the way, seems to be that the main character never has a first name.

In the right hands, even a restricted genre like this can produce something that's a pleasure to watch, and this picture is a joy from beginning to end. From the very beginning, when Soderbergh starts to fragment time and space, dialogue overlaping from scene to scene, what we're seeing doesn't match what we're hearing, but every bit of it works perfectly. And, to put the icing on the cake, it's only ninety minutes long, with not one frame wasted.

Terence Stamp plays Wilson, a minor Cockney crook who has come to California to kill whoever was responsible for the death of his daughter, Jenny. Peter Fonda plays Terry Valentine, the very successful record producer who was Jenny's lover. Soderbergh makes full use of the fact that both of these men are excellent actors, and also icons of the 1960s (while making no attempt to hide the effects of the intervening years on both of them). In fact, the flashbacks to Wilson's younger days are actually scenes from the 1967 film "Poor Cow," in which Terence Stamp played a minor crook named Wilson.

A lot of the way the film moves back and forth in time, including repeated shots of Wilson on a plane (coming to LA? or leaving?) reminded me of "The Sweet Hereafter," though Soderbergh's touch is far more confident and purposeful. In fact, seeing this just a few days after The Insider, I was wishing that Soderbergh's talents had been applied to a story as substantial and important as that one. His wonderfully tight pacing and his perfect use of music would have been especially welcome there.