Steven Soderbergh's beautifully paced and looming thriller has Terence Stamp as an ex-con fresh out of prison and looking for answers over his estranged daughter's death. He travels to LA and meets up with her friend, the always good Luis Guzmán, who tells him of her relationship with creepy producer Peter Fonda.
The film focuses on the relationships between the characters, their interactions with each other and the lives they've lived rather than being an all out revenge piece and this gives the action, when it suddenly pops up, a much more shocking impact.
Soderbergh has a wonderful trick of using flashbacks cut from a 1967 Ken Loach film called Poor Cow where Stamp played a young thief and being able to see the same actor in his youth, rather than someone playing him, makes all the difference and the scenes he uses gives a really good impression of the character's relationship with his daughter.
This is a film about people and even though there is a car chase and several shootouts it's the really classy performances of everyone involved that leave the lasting impression. Stamp and Fonda, as you'd expect, are particularly good but there are no hangers on in this movie.
I can understand why this film didn't do so well with an American audience, it feels so European that it's almost a surprise it was made by an American director. The production, sound and cinematography are great and I think the use of light is outstanding. I realise I'm using a lot of superlatives but this is a really well put-together movie.
I read recently that Michael Caine was originally pencilled in for the lead and though I like Caine I'm glad it's not him. It would have ended up as Get Carter in the US and it deserves more than that.
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