Limbo 1999

Port Henry, Alaska is a town under growing pressure as its economy pivots from traditional canning and paper work toward a tourism-driven future. Joe Gastineau [David Strathairn] is a former high school basketball star who has become a practical handyman, fixing things around the resort hotel owned by Frankie [Kathryn Grody] and Lou. Joe also forms a quiet friendship with Noelle De Angelo [Vanessa Martinez], a diligent teenager who helps out at the hotel alongside her mother, Donna, a lounge singer who eventually becomes romantically involved with Joe after breaking up with her live-in boyfriend.

When Frankie and Lou offer him a chance to return to his old trade, Joe takes the helm on a fishing boat they’ve secured as collateral from Harmon King [Leo Burmester]. This setup thrusts Joe into a world where livelihood and risk intertwine, and it also places him closer to Donna, whose relationship with Noelle has already become strained. Noelle’s disapproval of her mother’s lifestyle adds tension at every turn, especially as Donna begins dating Joe, a man who had previously attracted Noelle’s own affections.

Joe’s past weighs on him as well. He was involved in a deadly sinking that claimed the lives of his boatmates, a tragedy that haunts him and is linked to the brother of local bush pilot and small-time criminal “Smilin’ Jack” Johannson [Kris Kristofferson]. That history informs his cautious demeanor as events unfold.

The drama intensifies when Joe’s dissolute half-brother Bobby (Casey Siemaszko) arrives and begs Joe to crew his boat for a client. Reluctantly, Joe invites Donna and Noelle along, and they spend a night moored in an isolated bay. Bobby reveals that he’s tangled in marijuana smuggling and has dumped a load overboard when pressed by the police. The trio finds themselves marked for danger as Bobby’s debt partners close in. That night, armed men slip onto the boat and kill Bobby, forcing Joe, Donna, and Noelle to flee.

They escape to a nearby island and seek shelter in an abandoned cabin, where the fragile trio begins to rely on one another for survival. As they endure the hardships of isolation, Noelle discovers a diary left behind by a teenage girl who had once lived in the same cabin with her family. The diaries become a shared ritual: Noelle reads passages aloud to Joe and Donna, and Donna eventually realizes much of what Noelle read was imagined by her companion. The lines between truth and invention blur as they sustain a signal fire and scrounge for edible scraps along the shoreline.

After about a week and a half, a seaplane piloted by Smilin’ Jack Johannson lands nearby, claiming he’s out of fuel and radio contact with his own backers. He explains he was hired by two men to locate three castaways and promises to return with supplies and perhaps help, though Joe remains skeptical. Jack’s radio appears to have been removed, a detail that gnaws at Joe’s trust as he weighs rescue against the possibility of fresh danger. A few rain-soaked days pass without a return flight, heightening the suspense. Then, one morning, a larger seaplane is seen approaching, cutting through the mist toward them—its arrival hints at a potential escape or a new twist to the peril they’re already facing.