The Limey

On the face of it this is a classic British gangster film with Terrence Stamp playing Wilson, an ex-con lured to LA by a letter informing him of his daughters death. But it more than this. In very quickly laying out the revenge theme and setting up Wilson as something of an irresistable force, the need for convoluted heists is dispensed with and what unfolds instead is an intimate portrait of a man coming to terms with the consequences of his lifestyle and several terms in jail.

The script is efficient and combined with editing that often has a conversation played out over several locations gives the film a momentum that briskly gathers pace as it whips through it's 85 min runtime. But by keeping to a small cast and focusing on Wilson, brevity does not come at the expense of character development. Also, while clearly being informed by gangster films from both sides of the channel, it achieves a freshness and sense of originality I hadn't expected from the Such staple genre work. While the outcome is never in doubt it doesn't matter too much because getting there is so entertaining.