LIMBO (2023) - Mark Reviews Movies

Limbo, Capelight Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 28, 2023

Set in a Hong Kong that looks ethereally beautiful from above and like hell on Earth below, Limbo is an effortlessly stylish piece of neo-noir. Director Soi Cheang's mystery also an inherently ugly movie about the intrinsic ugliness of people. At times, the cruelty on display is simply too much, and it starts to feel as if Cheang wallows in it for sensationalistic ends.

The plot of Kin-yee Au and Kwan-sin Shum's screenplay takes a couple of standard notes from a typical police procedural thriller and tosses them together. That's fine, especially since Cheang and cinematographer Cheng Siu-keung are more concerned with how this movie looks than what it sets out to do and say.

On that level, it's a gorgeous exercise in filmmaking, even when it observes and gets in close to the grime, the trash, and the rain-soaked streets and alleyways of the story's primary setting. Shot in luscious black-and-white, the movie sometimes shows the skyscrapers and public transit systems of the city from a bird's-eye view, where everything glows in luminous shades of white. This tale, though, concerns itself with matters on a street level, as a serial assaulter and killer is roaming, stalking women, and severing the left hand of each of his victims.

On the case are veteran detective Cham (Ka-tung Lam), a man who has seen—and, apparently, smelled—too much to be much affected by the crimes, and newcomer Will (Mason Lee), a bespectacled and by-the-books detective who quickly becomes a bit suspicious of new partner's methods. The main plot follows the pair's investigation, which takes them through garbage-filled alleys and has them finding a body in a trash bin, but the other focal point is Cham's relationship with Wong (Yase Liu), a woman recently released from prison. She struck Cham's wife with a car, leaving her in a coma with little hope of recovery.

Obviously, all of this is intentionally meant to be unpleasant, brutal, and filled with despair. Our protagonist is a man who abuses, threatens, and manipulates Wong, who is desperate for the cop's forgiveness. Cheang seems to be making a point in juxtaposing the detective's vengeful punishment of Wong with the depraved acts of the killer, a Japanese immigrant and street cleaner (played by Hiroyuki Ikeuchi)—mainly in the treatment of women, of course.

It's difficult, though, to see much beneath the surface of that comparison, particularly when the movie treats the women in it as anonymous victims of men and the world. The vegetative wife is no one and nothing but a plot device, and Wong seems to have no existence before her present state as the target of Cham's ire and as another among the victims, including a scene of sexual violence that comes across as exploitative. Limbo gradually moves toward a slightly more hopeful message, albeit in a convoluted way during a final showdown, but the foul dread overwhelms it.

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