Limbo

Limbo is a one take film like Victoria. but its not so clever constructed. The story and caracters can't convince, their motivations didnt react to me.

most of the film takes place in an illegal fight club. the camera follows the characters through much to long corridors, that only connect one dialogue with the next. camerawork is mediocre, with many much too close closeups, lazy focus and not that interesting viewing angles.

the story is quite boring, dealing with illegal money, banks and a underworld king. Something you have seen 1000 times before.

wait until it will be shown on TV and dont spend any money on it.

Overall, the German movie is not doing so well. The genres of German movies seem to be the usual suspects: Romantic comedies or everything about WWII. We shouldn't even start talking about the questionable practice of movie funding in Germany, i.e. Allocation of public money for movie productions.

What has been done here with Limbo is a ray of hope.

Since the movie was shot in one take, we are in the middle of all action from the very beginning and follow the protagonists step by step. It is unforgivable to hold your cell phone in your hand while watching. There is too much happening in every minute.

Sure, it seems as if Martin Semmelrogge as Ozzy falls into overacting in the first third of the movie, but his acting then blends wonderfully into the heated atmosphere of the movie's main setting.

The actors, crew and extras did a great job. In a one-take shot, every little mistake is unforgivable. A slip of the tongue in dialog, looking into the camera, wrong timing - everything sets the shoot back to the beginning. But the risk and the effort paid off.

The gangster story which takes place in Munich (no, we are not in Berlin this time) is believable, even if it also serves stereotypes.

The movie was released at a difficult time just a few weeks before the beginning of the pandemic in Germany and has, quite wrongly, received too little attention.

It not often happens I´m not eating my popcorn box 🍿completely or thought about leaving a movie (2 people out of about 20 did). Well, last time it was the sneak preview of Charlies Angels, if you know what I mean.

I hoped troughout the whole movie for a real plot twist or more excitement.There was nothing. No character development, everthing predictable. I would not even watch it on television for free. Why did they film a movie with nearly the same topic as "Bad banks"?!

They advertised with the "one-shot"- technique and maybe I don´t get the advantage of this. But I don´t want to see the person walk up and down a starway in a 3rd-person view half of the movie without a real contribution to the story..maybe a simple cut had helped here?!

Of course Martin Semmelrogge had a few funny talks but it didn´t helped the movie to be good.

Large part of the film was shot in a former 25kv substation in Munich (Englischer Garten), a multi-part cubic building complex in exposed brickwork with flat roofs, workshop and wheelhouse, built according to plans of the municipal building authority 1930/31, which now houses a few companies. At the beginning the large building are the Highlight Towers, the second highest building in Munich and one of the few rare skyskrapers there (because of a referendum in 2004 which forbids buildings higher then the Frauenkirche). It is a one-shot-film in cooperation with the Filmhochschule München (university of television and film munich).

I have not seen the show Bad Banks, so I cannot comment or confirm what another reviewer is saying about this movie. So maybe this is or feels like a bad copy of series to him and others. Totally legit to say that and I can see where or how he was rather dissapointed in the movie at hand.

Technically this isn't bad, which I reckon even the other person is willing to admit. No matter how much he doesn't like the overall end product. Having said that, the actors are quite fine overall, with especially Semmelrogge shining through a lot. The one shot is a gimmick, you may or may not care about. The story itself is ok to decent - I've seen worse, I've seen better