A cold-case murder investigation is reopened in Ivan Sen’s gritty and potent narrative as the outback is the setting to revisit indigenous trauma and attempt to respectfully redress injustice.
With his own personal demons, Travis Hurley (Simon Baker – Breath, The Devil Wears Prada), a jaded detective, arrives in the strange outback mining town of Coober Pedy. Initially finding it difficult to connect with family members of the young female victim, Hurley slowly makes inroads as he unearths ignored statements and truths from the previous investigation.
Fractured families, racism and inequality are ever present in writer/director Ivan Sen’s (Mystery Road, Beneath Clouds) thoughtful yet strangely detached noir tale. Stark black and white photography accentuates the almost lunar terrain, remnants of opal mining, providing the intriguing backdrop for the quiet potency of a very Australian story. On paper a police thriller, Limbo is, in its own limited scope, as much an investigation into the losses and injustices continually faced by First Nations Australians as it is an investigation into a murder of twenty years earlier.
Rating: 71%
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