The Dark Dream of Soderbergh’s 'The Limey'

"Tell 'em I'm coming."

Yesterday was British actor Terence Stamp’s 86th birthday, and if I hadn’t been working, I would have likely marked the occasion by re-watching “The Limey,” Steven Soderbergh’s oddly beautiful noir film about an ex-con attempting to avenge his daughter’s death.

I first saw “The Limey” when it came out in 1999, at a small art-house theater in downtown Chicago. It was opening weekend but there were a grand total of three or four people in the audience. (As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to believe that a movie’s opening-weekend box office is often inversely proportional to its quality, at least when it comes to grittier fare.) I’ve watched it eight or nine times since, and every time I find something new in its dreamlike editing, the shattered timeline, the nuances of the acting.

In simplest terms, “The Limey” is a revenge flick: British ex-con Wilson (Stamp) arrives in Los Angeles to solve th…