WHEN Hollywood wants a bad guy there's always enough Brit actors kicking around LA to fill the part. Must be something about the accent that makes them so apparently ripe for villainry.

The eponymous "limey", is another UK villain, although thankfully not another campy cardboard cutout. One-time poster boy, Terence Stamp, plays Wilson, an East London hard man who has just finished a stretch for armed robbery. Intent on avenging what he believes is his daughter's murder he flies to LA, where he pursues a direct path through the murky LA underworld toward a slippery music promoter Valentine (Peter Fonda). With his blunt cockney manner and disregard for the LA way of doing things, this leads to some darkly amusing exchanges, and sudden, decisive violence.

From the start, the most striking aspect of this stylish-looking film, is Soderburgh's non-linear filmic narrative. Soderburgh unravels his story using layers of quick-cut, impressionistic images and short episodic scenes that slip back and forth in time. One is reminded of the kaleidoscopic narrative style of Atom Egoyan's films or the classic noir thriller, Point Blank, in the way that the audience is given the various pieces of the puzzle, but only in the end does the whole picture come into view. It turns what might be an average noirish thriller into something quite compelling. Frequently, a flashed image on the screen succeeds in evoking the mood - whether it be fear, paranoia, friendship, anger, or regret.

Stamp's performance as the avenging father is also tremendous. He plays with a mixture of roguish charm and unflinching toughness which occasionally softens to allow us to glimpse the pain within. Added to this are good supportive roles from Peter Fonda, Luis Guzman, as an ex-con who helps Wilson out, and Lesley Ann Warren as the feisty drama teacher who also befriends the Brit.