SOURCE: Kemp, Philip. Review of Limbo, by John Sayles. Sight and Sound 10, no. 2 (February 2000): 47-8.

In the following review, Kemp contends that in Limbo, a film about disillusioned outsiders on an island off the coast of Alaska, Sayles has avoided the didacticism that plagued his earlier efforts.

John Sayles is one of the most politically tuned-in of American independents. But the downside to his social awareness can be a tendency to didacticism, where the narrative moves predictably towards closure. Not this time, though. Limbo is Sayles' most unexpected film to date: not so much in its themes, which connect with his previous work, as in the shape of the story and the way it's resolved—or rather, in the way it isn't resolved. Limbo, as Sayles defines it, is “a condition of unknowable outcome”, and this is exactly the point he leads us to.

Locations are crucial to...