The Daily Stream: Steven Soderbergh Dives Inside The Mind In ‘The Limey’
By Jeremy Mathai/Aug. 13, 2021 1:01 pm EST
Set to the strains of “The Seeker” by The Who (see what Soderbergh did there?), the movie starts unassumingly enough with Wilson arriving in Los Angeles and getting himself settled in for what promises to be a dark and obsessive quest. From his accent to his age to his appearance, he is woefully out of place everywhere he goes. But our first real indication that something’s amiss comes when we suddenly cut from Wilson looking at a written address to Wilson at the door of that address. The following moments are subsequently intercut with silent, disparate images of Wilson staring off into the distance while on a flight or brief glimpses of his daughter when she was young, all with the haunting sound of wind chimes steadily increasing in the background of the mix.
This doesn’t make total logical sense in the moment (nor is it meant to), but Soderbergh isn’t going for logic here. He constantly goes back to tricks like these to evoke intangibles such as the messiness of memory, of stream of consciousness, of pain itself. The other major tool in his arsenal involves taking otherwise basic scenes where Wilson talks to another character, and scattering these conversations over the course of different locations and times. Through the magic of editing (this is where we heap praise on both Soderbergh and especially editor Sarah Flack), splicing these scenes together gives the appearance of one fluid sequence of dialogue despite our rational minds telling us that this shouldn’t be possible. Dramatically speaking, it’s as if Wilson is recalling the same conversation after the fact … but with the inherent flaws and imperfections that come with the human capacity for memory.
The effect this has on the overall film goes far beyond what you might expect. In typical Soderbergh style, The Limey reveals itself to be more than what it seems to be on the surface. Wilson may be a dangerous and unhinged maniac, willing to throw people off cliffs at a moment’s notice just as impetuously as he daydreams of shooting his target, Valentine (Peter Fonda), no less than three different ways before cooler heads prevail, but the shockingly understated conclusion of his murderous rampage adds an entire new appreciation for every character involved — to say nothing of Soderbergh himself, who once again proves his talent in paying off earlier set-ups that viewers never even thought were set-ups in the first place.
The Limey gets its hands dirty in bringing viewers down to the level of Wilson and his nemesis, but isn’t that just another way to create audience empathy towards unlikable, immoral characters? Soderbergh digs deep into the mind of Wilson and, in the process, makes us reflect on ourselves, too.
