I was initially amused by Stamp's overemphasised Cockney-isms, but as you familiarise yourself with the character, this fades away, although his insistence on quoting rhyming slang and then explaining it can grate a little!
Seriously, this is a nugget of a film, the sort of thing you stumble across on TV by accident and think "wow, that was amazing!". The story involves a just-out-of-prison Londoner named Wilson (Stamp) whose daughter has died in LA, apparently in a car accident. A friend of the daughter implicates Terry Valentine (Peter Fonda) as being a negative life influence and party perhaps in her demise. To complete the triumvirate of 60's cult actors, Barry Newman appears as Avery, Valentine's erstwhile head of Security.
All of the men have an air of their time of true living being passed, a quiet pining for the lives they used to or (in Wilson's case, due to incarceration) never quite had.. This is the true magic of this movie, the huge emotional subtext of ageing and loss, which in some way reminded me of Jackie Brown in that the reflective side of the characters is given more room to breathe than you normally expect.
Soderbergh, as in Out of Sight (1998), uses editing trickery to evoke his characters feelings. Wilson has regular flashbacks to seeing his late daughter on the beach as a child, or threating to shop him to the police as a 7 year old! Old footage from Ken Loach's classic Poor Cow (1967) show Wilson in his late 20's, at his prime, and give a poignancy to the whole film which leads to the ending having an emotional gravitas that took me be surprise somewhat.
Fonda is effortlessly good as he is, more or less, playing himself. His slimy, inept, past-it 60's nostalgic record producer is as easily dislikeable as Wilson is simple and from the heart likeable.
Overall, a stunning, if slow movie that touches in a way that other similar films rarely do.
9/10
Seriously, this is a nugget of a film, the sort of thing you stumble across on TV by accident and think "wow, that was amazing!". The story involves a just-out-of-prison Londoner named Wilson (Stamp) whose daughter has died in LA, apparently in a car accident. A friend of the daughter implicates Terry Valentine (Peter Fonda) as being a negative life influence and party perhaps in her demise. To complete the triumvirate of 60's cult actors, Barry Newman appears as Avery, Valentine's erstwhile head of Security.
All of the men have an air of their time of true living being passed, a quiet pining for the lives they used to or (in Wilson's case, due to incarceration) never quite had.. This is the true magic of this movie, the huge emotional subtext of ageing and loss, which in some way reminded me of Jackie Brown in that the reflective side of the characters is given more room to breathe than you normally expect.
Soderbergh, as in Out of Sight (1998), uses editing trickery to evoke his characters feelings. Wilson has regular flashbacks to seeing his late daughter on the beach as a child, or threating to shop him to the police as a 7 year old! Old footage from Ken Loach's classic Poor Cow (1967) show Wilson in his late 20's, at his prime, and give a poignancy to the whole film which leads to the ending having an emotional gravitas that took me be surprise somewhat.
Fonda is effortlessly good as he is, more or less, playing himself. His slimy, inept, past-it 60's nostalgic record producer is as easily dislikeable as Wilson is simple and from the heart likeable.
Overall, a stunning, if slow movie that touches in a way that other similar films rarely do.
9/10