Limbo

Limbo is vital personal filmmaking from a world-class practitioner of the art. Read full review

Stunningly acted and superbly shot (by Haskell Wexler), it is written, with Sayles' customary ear for vivid phrasing and telling details, as a meditation on man's desire to divorce himself not only from Nature but from his own true nature, imbuing the film with the intensity and rigour of an allegorical fable. And the ending truly makes you think about what you've just seen. Read full review

For a while, Limbo seems like it might be a slow-burning romance and tale of redemption, but, as is often the case, Sayles takes his audience in unexpected directions (unexpected because they defy comfortable, traditional narrative routes). Read full review

As he's done in such otherwise diverse pictures as Lone Star, City of Hope, and The Secret of Roan Inish, in Limbo writer-director Sayles circles down into a community of friends, colleagues, strangers - and shows what happens when paths cross, and sometimes double-cross. [04 Jun 1999, p.03]

At its worst, Limbo is ersatz Conrad. But at its best, the film makes us feel that uncertainty and darkness, casting us into the cul-de-sac of modern life and love. [04 Jun 1999, p.A]

A moody adventure story set in Alaska that resonates with envrionmental overtones and is filled with delicate character studies, but ends up being a terrific little genre thriller. [04 Jun 1999]

Both moving and strangely haunting. Read full review

Sayles has started with a domestic comedy, and led us unswervingly into the heart of darkness. Read full review

Both halves of the film are exquisitely acted and written, both are emotionally true, and yet they don't quite fit together. Read full review

The weaknesses in Sayles' story and his occasional bouts with didacticism are far outweighed by the film's exceptional intimacy and humanity. Read full review

Until it goes off course, Limbo not only is up to Sayles's high standard, but extends it. [04 Jun 1999, p.C4]

Sayles takes great storytelling risks to explore this theme; his unusual approach will please some viewers and irritate others. [04 Jun 1999, p.14]

Highly unconventional in structure and tone, the story is engrossing and exquisitely acted. [17 Jun 1999, p.14]

If this oddly structured film feels like two short stories stuck together, there is enough solid glue joining them that they resonate off one another deeply. Read full review

The ending of Limbo is a disappointment, but this is a film which lingers in the mind long after the final credits. Read full review

Excellent performances and the steadying camerawork of Haskell Wexler make Limbo a supremely engaging work, but this place to which Sayles condemns his viewers is just one rung removed from Purgatory. Read full review

Though it’s admirable that Sayles shows so much ambition to change his style and to give his film such a weight of unpredictability, he doesn’t really succeed at matching the depth of the film’s first half. Read full review

By aiming for something more ambitiously, ambiguously philosophical, [Sayles] forgot to include a heart and a soul. Read full review

For me, the biggest problem with the script is a mid-film plot twist that takes place almost immediately after we've been told the characters are in danger. The introduction of this possibility is too neat, too fast. [04 Jun 1999]

Engrossing up to a point, the movie ends up being another mild disappointment from a filmmaker who last put it all together with Passion Fish -- seven years and four movies ago. [04 Jun 1999]

The central performances are solid, and Kris Kristoffersen contributes a tantalizing turn as a smiling, dark-souled adventurer. Still, these successful elements only point up the unfocused, undeveloped nature of everything around them. Director Sayles should have been a lot tougher on screenwriter Sayles. [25 Jun 1999, p.L24]

Determined to use melodrama as a vehicle to get to other places and explore other possibilities, Sayles simply assumes the audience will go along with him. His skill is such that we invariably do, but the journey, like that of his characters, is not always an easy one. [04 Jun 1999, p.F6]

The first half of the film leisurely examines the deterioration and possible salvation of the soul in a once-glorious, rapidly disintegrating landscape. (His Alaska is full of closed factories, wandering tourists and strip mines.) The second half, with its contrived setup and its individual journeys of self-discovery (harvesting kelp and building fires), is artificial and sadly undermines all that's gone before. Read full review

Limbo is half-priced Sayles. After a promising opening in which numerous interesting aspects of life in modern Alaska are laid out, the potentially fascinating social dynamics are dropped in favor of a thinly realized survival tale that falls flat dramatically and cinematically. Read full review

There's an argument to be made that the film's ending is the logical conclusion of its notion that everyone's trapped in a limbo of disappointment, uncertainty and paralyzing fear of change. But it feels like a cheap cop out: The cast, and the audience, deserve better. Read full review

This brash shocker by John Sayles—who wrote, directed, and edited—is bound to annoy as many people as it intrigues. Read full review