Black Limousine

Released on: 19 October 2010
Distributed by: Anchor Bay Films
Directed by: Carl Colpaert
Starring: David Arquette, Bijou Philips, Tom Bower
Year: 2011
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The Movie:

When the movie Drive was released last year it created a stir for varied reasons but, love it or hate it, that film's mood and style could not be overlooked. The idea of bringing art-house filmmaking to a notoriously violent and even cheesy genre was an inspired choice. And so it's safe to assume that other films would try to capture that same essence of style-elevating-substance. Black Limousine is such a picture, taking the idea of a Hollywood wannabe who's life is destructing and try to tell it sort of as a dream sequence. But where Drive worked as a paean to 80s action films by keeping it straightforward and simple this film misses that in its inspiration and ends up hollowly aping those qualities.

Black Limousine is ostensibly a story about finding some kind of meaning or peace in the craziest of worlds. Jack (David Arquette) is a soundtrack composer who's got some dark in his past, is somewhat recently divorced and takes a more-reliable job as a limo driver. He attends AA meetings in an attempt to clean up his life, where he meets aspiring singer Erica (Bijou Philips). Her openness and spontaneity are very appealing for Jack in adding a romantic element to his “noisy” life.

He starts driving for a Hollywood bigshot, Thomas Bower (Nicholas Bishop), who's friendly enough and represents a new chapter in his composing career, potentially. But as Jack gets closer to what it is he thinks he wants his mental faculties begin to erode. And that's where the film thinks it has liberties to begin throwing in non sequiturs and dreamlike sequences with abandon. And by “abandon” I mean that rather than serving the film's narrative structure they instead confuse fantasy for the storyline that they've just spent the first half hour of the film building. Clearly, this is meant to show how the world looks from Jack's perspective but there's little to no context to help cement that notion - and, thus, the viewer is left stranded and confused.

This isn't to say it's done badly here but, rather, its intent manages to miss the mark. Black Limousine is still fairly well done and worth watching but it's just doesn't live up to what it really tries to hard to accomplish.

Audio/Video/Extras:

This DVD from Anchor Bay is fairly bare-bones, only featuring a chapter selection and no other language audio or subtitles. The English audio comes across nicely in 5.1 Dolby Digital and the widescreen 2.40:1 presentation is quite clean and shows off this film's very good cinematography quite well.

Summary:

Black Limousine is a film that has an extensive reach but unfortunately gets bogged down with too many distractions, trading narrative for stream-of-consciousness bits that detour the viewer rather than enhance the story. Beautifully shot and well acted it just falls far short of the art-house goals it sets for itself.