Limbo (1999)

If many of your great cinematic experiences have been found on the Lifetime channel or maybe the Halmark channel then you might like this movie. It has a very distinct made-for-TV feel to it. The only difference is there are a few strong swear words here and there.The acting is sub par, the story isn't all that interesting. There is a flat romance, a guy with a tragedy in his past and some mother-daughter tension and thats about it. Until the end when some "evil drug dealers" appear on the scene in an attempt to create some tension, which I personally found only laughable. Calling this movie a "thriller" is a bit misleading.Overall, a very dull and forgettable film. It isn't worth the 2 hours it takes to get through to the "clever" ending.

I do get so weary of watching typical Hollywood films made for 14 year old kids, and so a film like this is sweet relief from that. Nothing about character or plot is simple, here. The ending is ambiguous, but then, so is real life, and somehow we manage to cope with that.Like others here, I must recommend the DVD commentary. I felt as if I were spending a weekend at a top film school, listening to Sayles discuss the various techniques, lighting, lenses, and so forth, that we laypeople seldom think about.As much as I like his movies, his short stories are even better. If you haven't treated yourself to reading them, please do.

This beautifully filmed and highly intelligent movie is essentially a soap opera about a small-time nightclub singer in Alaska and her adolescent daughter. The latter is perpetually upset by the former's continuous succession of boy friends, forcing the daughter to move each year and feel a loneliness that is eating her up. The plot, in short, resembles that of Neal Simon's The Goodbye Girl.Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is superb as the singer, and David Strathairn is a fine lead male character. More than halfway through the film, the plot takes a strong turn, and the lives of the three major characters are placed in jeopardy. Incredibly, the film ends without resolving the issue. We do not know if these interesting people we've learned to know for the past couple of hours are murdered or rescued. In a theater, I would have booed and thrown things at the screen. (Well, at least when I was younger and dumber.) Along the way, we receive some liberal propaganda about the commercial uses of Alaska. And there are some fine shots of the landscape and seascape. But don't expect to learn much about the state, for this is a fascinating melodrama that could have been filmed anywhere. What a shame that John Sayles copped out at the end, leaving many viewers frustrated and angry.

This is a movie that does not let you know where it is going, but you enjoy the entire trip. I am unfamiliar with the director, John Sayles, and the male lead, David Strathairn, is one of those actors you will recognize.... from somewhere, but perhaps not recall where. He and the female lead, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, were superb, as were Vanessa Martinez, playing Mastrantonio's daughter, and Kris Kristopherson does well as ambigous figure you don't know whether to like or loathe.The characters presented are all real, all believable, all well defined, yet none defined easily as stereotyped cardboard cutouts.Strathairn deserved an Acadamy Award nomination for his role. After renting dozens of disappointing films it is truly satisfying to stumble on on this good. The surprise is that the film got so little backing at the time and went nowhere in the box office.