I’ve been aware of TerenceStamp since 1962, when he played the title role in a film adaptation of aHerman Melville novella, Billy Budd. The part, Stamp’s first in anAmerican film, is that of a young 19th century sailor whose optimismand blond beauty have tragic consequences. For Stamp himself the consequenceswere excellent, including an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe award. But hecertainly didn’t confine himself to playing innocents, as his dangerous allurein The Collector (1965) made quite clear.

 Personally I associate Stamp,who died this past August at age 87, with two widely different roles. In 1967’sFar from the Madding Crowd, a lavish period film based on a novel byThomas Hardy, he played a dashing military man who woos and weds thetempestuous Bathsheba Everdene (Julie Christie), only to squander her holdingsand break her heart. In 1994, he was unrecognizable in The Adventures ofPriscilla, Queen of the Desert, a riotous flick about drag queens gallivantingthrough the Australian outback in a colorful tour bus. In this cult favorite,Stamp’s role was that of a transgender woman. It’s been revealed since hisdeath that he had recently completed all of his scenes for Priscilla, Queenof the Desert 2, a film about the challenges of old age that’s currently stillin production.

 In reading obits for Stamp, Icame across reference to a Steven Soderbergh thriller I’d never seen. I’ve beena great admirer of Soderbergh’s diverse body of work ever since I saw hispoignant breakthrough indie, Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989). Nine yearslater, he was widely recognized for Out of Sight, a Florida-set crimecomedy. Based on an Elmore Leonard novel, it elicited sexy, stellarperformances from George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. One year later, Soderberghwas still working in the crime genre. Stamp was the star of his The Limey,a film about a British Cockney crook who’s also a bereaved father. Fresh out ofprison for the umpteenth time, he hightails it to L.A. to investigate hisdaughter’s sudden death somewhere off Mulholland Drive.  

 I’d hardly call The Limey acomedy, but there’s humor (of the fish-out-of-water variety) to be found inthis rough and tumble crook experiencing the glitz of Hollywood, a place whereno one seems to understand a word he says. His first contact is a down-to-earthLatino (Luis Guzman) who knew his pretty young daughter from (natch!) an actingclass.  Various deadly escapades in thewarehouses of Downtown L.A. lead him eventually to a slick music producer witha fabulous home in the hills. He’s played by a toothy Peter Fonda, who lookslike an updated version of his hipster role in Roger Corman’s L.S.D.-laced TheTrip (1967). He’s fabulously wealthy, he likes keeping beautiful youngwomen on hand, he throws lavish parties, and it’s quite clear he’s up to nogood. Somehow Stamp’s Wilson, while eluding both Fonda’s goons and somenot-entirely-on-the-up-and-up drug agents, manages to accomplish his personalmission without ever getting his clothes mussed.

 Soderbergh has always beenbig on experimentation, and The Limey is shot and edited in a flashy stylethat some might find distracting. Nor is this film sexy in the way Out ofSight proved to be. (Who can forget Clooney and Lopez, on opposite sides ofthe law, trapped together in very close quarters in the trunk of a car?) But Ienjoyed seeing Terence Stamp in a different phase of his long career, playing aman taciturn and tough, but a loving father all the same.