If I asked you to name your favourite movie moment ever, could you pinpoint a single scene? It's tough, huh? I've whittled my list down to about a dozen - half of which, it turns out, are Christopher Walken and Samuel L. Jackson monologues. But there is one scene that stands out.
Three enormous thugs throw Terence Stamp, playing old-time London gangster Wilson, out into the street and threaten to kill him if he ever returns. As they retreat into a building, Wilson dusts himself down and, removing a pistol from the waistband of his jeans, strides in after them. Out of sight come the sounds of a scuffle followed by six gunshots before one of the thugs comes tearing out of the building running for his life. The camera shakes as Wilson emerges onto the street. He calmly shouts, in his best cockney accent, "You tell him. You tell him I'm coming. Tell him I'm f****** coming."
It's a mesmerising, menacing scene from 1999 crime caper The Limey, a stylish, inventive movie from Oscar-winning director Steven Soderberg, and arguably the filmmaker's masterpiece.
Early last year, Soderberg announced he would be taking a sabbatical from feature films, and The Knick (Cinemax, Saturday at 10pm) is his first venture on the small screen. The 10-part period drama is set in New York at the turn of the 20th century, when medical practices were as experimental as they were restorative. Clive Owen (top; Closer) stars as John Thackery, the brilliant but arrogant newly appointed chief of surgery at the Knickerbocker Hospital, whose addiction to cocaine and opium only fuels his drive to make groundbreaking discoveries.
With mortality rates rising, the surgeons resort to testing their innovative procedures on pigs and cadavers, while the hospital, run by a crooked superintendent, struggles to make a profit. Joining the all-white staff, much to Thackery's displeasure, is gifted black surgeon Algernon Edwards (Andre Holland; 1600 Penn) who must fight for recognition among his peers in the racially charged city.
Much like Soderberg's silver-screen offerings, The Knick is dark and moody (this is no Grey's Anatomy), creative, stylish and highly engrossing. It appears the change of scenery has done the filmmaker no harm at all.