“The Limey” is the latter type of Soderbergh movie. What he described as “a minor work” solidifying his “standing as a cult failure” is a mission statement. Released 20 years ago this month, “The Limey” shows a filmmaker preoccupied with new plot devices, but the style adds substance. The movie signaled Soderbergh’s commitment to a “John Huston plan for career longevity,” as he described to Salon in 2000.

“I’ve been trying to carve out half-in, half-out of the mainstream ideas for genre films made with some amount of care and intelligence and humor,” Soderbergh told Salon, explaining that his goal was “to see if we can get back to that period we all liked in American cinema 25 years ago.”

By 1998, Soderbergh had won over audiences and critics with the Elmore Leonard adaptation “Out of Sight.” Finally, after nine years of labored-over duds like “Kafka,” “King of the Hill,” “The Underneath,” and the free-wheeling, no budget lark "Schizopolis," the director had a successful follow-up to his Palme d’Or-winning debut “Sex, Lies, and Videotape.” What changed? Soderbergh’s approach.

“I wasn’t interested in making films about me anymore,” Soderbergh told Salon. “As somebody once put to me, bluntly, ‘If you think Hollywood movies are so fucking terrible, why don't you try to make a good one instead of bitching about it?’”

Free of the pressure of following up the festival favorite of independent cinema, Soderbergh leaned into his instinct while playing the business side of making movies, creating a niche where, for every crowd pleaser, he’d make a smaller, seemingly more personal indie.

“The Limey” is the point when Soderbergh confidently admitted his comfort zone is the genre film. Within that structure, he could push new ways of storytelling. The learning curve part of his career now in his rearview, he knew how to make smaller movies more efficiently and on the cheap.