Limbo: A Movie Review

I rented a DVD from Netflix called "Limbo".

I don't usually review movies because everyone and their kid brother reviews movies and travel and blah, blah, blah, but, I write what I want to write so shoot me.  Just do it from a distance because up close I will take the gun and shoot back :-)

If you plan on watching the movie don't read this review because it will screw the movie for you.  If you want a reasonable review read Roger Ebert's, although we have totally different opinions.  We both agree that the acting was great.  He thinks the director was great, I think the director was a putz.

This movie sucked.  The movie drags like a turtle pulling a trailer.  Give it 2 out of 5 stars.

The acting was great.  The visuals were great.  The plot was ridiculous.  The back story leading up to the plot was okay and in some cases very good.

The movie starts out at a wedding where the leading lady is singing the worst possible wedding song.  This first scene sets the tone of the movie, totally unbelievable.  The brides father would have come over, or sent someone over, and told the band to play something else.  If it had been my daughters wedding I would have been kicking the band off the stage, physically, literally, kicking.  If you watch the movie you'll understand.  That said, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio has a good voice.

The leading man is David Strathairn and he was really believable in this movie.  Let me tell you how good he is.  Kris Kristofferson plays a bush pilot involved in the drug business.  David Strathairn is trapped on an island with a woman and a sick girl. Kristofferson lands.  Strathairn has a talk with Kris and finds out bad guys sent Kris to find Strathairn and the woman and girl so they can kill them.  David Strathairn makes letting Kris, the drug dealing bush pilot, fly off to go get the bad guys seem almost reasonable.

Not quite, but almost.

Any reasonable person trapped in that situation would have fought with Kristofferson to keep the plane there.  The radio might work, there might be things they can use.  So what if they can't take off the plane makes a crappy boat all by itself.  Think about it for a couple seconds and any reasonable person would have done anything they could to stop that plane from leaving them.  David Strathairn's acting is so good it makes letting Kristofferson leave seem almost reasonable.

The movie ends "cut to black".  I thought to myself, the director either couldn't figure out how to end the movie or they ran out of money.  I am leaning toward the director couldn't figure out how to end the story.

By the end of the movie the plot was so ridiculous the only possible ending that could have made sense would have been that Kristofferson was busted almost as soon as he landed and flipped on the bad guys, telling the cops where the people were trapped on the island to cut a deal.  That was the only reasonable ending I could come up with.

If it had been me, I would have ended the movie with watching the plane land, a boot very much like the killers stepping out of the plane, pan up to a very native looking cop-pilot.  The last scene would have been the plane flying away from camera while Vanessa Martinez (Mastrantonio's daughter) narrates about Kristofferson flipping and ends the story with something uplifting about how she wrote the story.

I have to say that Vanessa Martinez was very good in this movie.  I never noticed her before and watching her in this I will be keeping an eye out for her.  Anyone who can act as well as she can will accomplish something in Hollywood.

Overall the movie was a waste, but,  if you enjoy good acting and you can imagine a decent ending (or just imagine mine) the movie might be worth watching.

But, I wouldn't recommend it.