Review of Factotum (2005) by Max J — 09 May 2009

Although I'm sure Bukowski's source material is very interesting, the adaptation of this particular piece of work to film by co-writer/director Bent Hamer is really quite poor. He's just not a director who grasps cinematic language, and scene after scene he hopelessly points the camera at Matt Dillon with the expectation that the audience will slip into his character's head, which obviously without utilizing some film technique we do not.

Factotum fails completely as a character study despite a noble effort by Matt Dillon, although does occasionally succeed at being mildly comic. But brief flashes of humour do nothing to assuage the stuporous pacing and complete lack of insight into anything.

And after Marisa Tomei's pointless appearance at the 45 minute mark, I gave serious consideration to turning this off. But didn't, and the last half of the movie slipped by as drearily and empty as the first.

Skip it.