The film features Terence Stamp, Lesley Ann Warren, Luis Guzmán, Barry Newman, Nicky Katt, and Peter Fonda.

[2] The plot concerns an English career criminal (Stamp) who travels to the United States to investigate the recent suspicious death of his daughter.

Worried her father would be sent away to prison, she would often threaten to call the police whenever she found evidence of the crimes he was involved in or planning.

Meanwhile, Stacy and his partner, angry at their beating at the hands of the DEA agents, plot to double cross Avery.

A younger Wilson plays the folk love song Colours on the guitar, while a woman strokes his hair.

Steven Soderbergh uses atypical flashback sequences, and includes several scenes (largely without dialogue) from a much older Terence Stamp movie, Ken Loach's 1967 directorial debut Poor Cow.

[5][6] Soderbergh and film editor Sarah Flack utilize a variety of unorthodox editing techniques in The Limey.

Background sound may be disjointed in the film and shifted to enhance another scene by suggesting continuation, similarity, or dissimilarity.

The website's consensus reads: "Crafted with eccentric moodiness and style by Steven Soderbergh, The Limey is also a gritty neo-noir showcase for the talent of leading man Terence Stamp.

Taut, imaginative and complex, this is one of the best American films of the year and a wonderful antidote to the numbing sameness of [some] movies.

He wrote, "The Limey, Steven Soderbergh's new crime picture, continues the helmer's artistic renewal, evident last year in the superbly realized Out of Sight.

Pic's most interesting element is the positioning of two icons of 1960s cinema, the very British Terence Stamp and the very American Peter Fonda, as longtime enemies in what's basically a routine revenge thriller ... [and] one has no problem praising the bravura acting of the entire ensemble and the pic's impressive technical aspects.

Warren, Guzman and Barry Newman give maturely restrained performances in line with the film's dominant texture.

A supporting turn by Joe Dallessandro, Andy Warhol's and Paul Morrissey's regular, accentuates pic's reflexive nature as a commentary on a bygone era of filmmaking.

Despite the unusual editing, Ebert described the plot as "basic Ross Macdonald", a reference to the mystery writer whose 1950s and '60s best-sellers set in southern California typically featured doom visited on the young adult children of wealthy parents with dark secrets.