Limbo

A gaunt, grizzled Simon Baker stalks an arid, haunted alien wasteland in Ivan Sen's immense yet decidedly inward Limbo, an eerie, sorrowful Australian police procedural drama that unfolds in stark black and white against the unearthly backdrop of an opal mining town. Twenty years ago a teenage indigenous girl was murdered here, the killer never found. Baker is the cop called in to reevaluate the cold case, a man who has a past so troubling he takes heroin just to cope with the day to day. The locals initially seem less than willing to help given the neglect and indifference of the police overall in this forgotten region, but eventually the brother (Rob Collins) and sister (Natasha Wanganeen in one of the year's best performances so far) warm up to him and express long buried desire to find some closure. Closure doesn't exist in such an open, vast, lonely corner of the world though and the bizarre stone structures and desert dwellings seem to hold secrets in steadfast silence. Baker stays at a motel that is literally carved into a mineral structure underground, his room akin to being on the moon in terms of tone and atmosphere. He resembles someone like Bryan Cranston here, I'm so used to him as the glib clairvoyant dude on The Mentalist, to see him in such a quietly despairing, resolutely rugged characterization is jarring, but in a good way. He has clearly sacrificed a piece of his humanity for the work, and his journey through this hushed desolation almost beckons him to regain some of it by finding a few long hidden answers. Almost. It's a quiet, hypnotic tale unlike many other cop/killer mysteries, where meaning and significance are found in the wavering pauses between words and all the collective pain and confusion that ripples out from a crime like that can be seen in Wanganeen's ghostly, impossibly wide eyes as she, a relative unknown to me, gives some career best work in a fantastic film.

The actors in this movie do a great job. Unfortunately thats where it stops.

While black and white might be an artist choir because of the name "Limbo" that could have been great that means the costume designer needed some more contrast. The whole film is grey.

There is nothing in the script that engages us with the characters themselves.. Who and why are the main missing themes.

The main character is obviously reworking a cold case, there is nothing about her case that is clear; is she miss6or or murdered. We don't even know what she looks like.

So many themes that could have been deeper. The overall script is an echo of the name, nothing is resolved, nothing is explained.

Limbo was an ok film that was heavily lacking in terms of details and substance.

It had the atmosphere, the dialogue and the characters overall felt realistic enough to believe in them. The atmosphere was all present, including a couple of metaphors here and there.

The idea of making it B&W didn't make too much sense for me, maybe it had something to do with the theme of the film, maybe it was made this was purely for the artistic purposes, but I'd appreciate it more if it had colors, just washed out or muted.

The detective concept worked fine, you could easily follow the story with the main character, understand what he was thinking without him directly explaining it. Many things in this film were understandable without direct expository dialogue, which is surely an achievement. Although, I'd appreciate more details and more of actual story. Seems like in real life things might be a little more complicated. The small amount of story the film had was still delivered and the ending was perfectly fine, although the main character's backstory and motivations of some characters were left behind.

So, as a one-time watch it's still perfectly fine, but more depth and real human emotions would've improve it for sure, since the story was either simplistic to begin with, or was simplified in the process.

I have watched and do follow Australian TV and cinema and the likes of "Black Snow" and "Limbo" only seem to have scratched the tip of the iceberg in terms of racism... "Limbo" feels even more personal though. You can see it in the austere setting and cinematography, sparse dialogue, superb delicate and minimalist method acting, symbolism throughout... seems black and white, but there truly are far more shades of grey to start snowballing a real conversion which, in all fairness, never, in a million years, have I thought Aussies needed to tackle... At the end of the day, this IS a "whodunnit", but at a much larger scale... TOTALLY RECOMMENDED!

I was hesitant to watch it but as it got further into the movie I was hooked. I loved it being shot in black and white, and the area it was shot in was amazing. Simon Baker played his role so well and I think this is one of his best movies.

The movie does touch on a subject that lots of people dont like talking about between the whites and the indigenous. It was mentioned that if it was a white girl that had gone missing a lot more would have been done but as she wasn't nothing was done to find the person who did it. The ending well....you should watch it and I think you will be surprised by it.