Amazon.com video review:
Steven Soderbergh's follow-up to his sexy thriller Out of
Sight is an equally stylish but far more austere crime drama, a
work of memory that mixes flashbacks, flashforwards, and ruminations
on the present into an invigorating cinematic quilt. Terence Stamp is
Wilson, an aging cockney criminal fresh out of prison who flies to Los
Angeles to search for his daughter's killer. She died in a car wreck,
but he suspects that her lover, a music industry mogul named Valentine
(Peter Fonda), knows more than he's telling. Wilson is a fish out of
water indeed, a cool, cruel London thug on the airy, sun-bright street
of L.A., a silver-haired criminal taking on street punks and hit men
with the relentless drive of a man possessed. It's like Get
Carter channeled through Point Blank, a hard-edged revenge
thriller steeped in sorrow and regret, trading the warmth of Out of
Sight's romantic heat for a more contemplative remove. Fonda
beautifully plays off his cinematic history of 1960s hippies and
rebels as a nervous, cowardly millionaire sellout in white cotton
peasant shirts and a deep California tan. Luiz Guzman and Lesley Ann
Warren costar as Wilson's "adopted" guides through modern L.A., and
Barry Newman is excellent as Valentine's tough, terse head of
security, another aging pro blindsided by Wilson's relentless
single-mindedness. Soderbergh quotes from Ken Loach's 1967 film
Poor Cow (sadly not available on video in the U.S.) for
Wilson's flashbacks as a fresh-faced teenage thug. --Sean
Axmaker
