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Factotum
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 25 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 15 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by:
Bent Hamer
Jim Stark
Charles Bukowski (novel)
Directed by: Bent Hamer
Release Date:
Theatrical: August 18, 2006
DVD: December 26, 2006
Running Time: 94 minutes, Color
Origin: USA / Norway
Summary
RATING: R for language and sexual content
Starring Matt Dillon, Lili Taylor, Fisher Stevens, Marisa Tomei, Didier Flamand, Adrienne Shelly, Karen Young, and Tony Lyons
Based on the novel by Charles Bukowski, Factotum is the story of a man living on the edge; a writer who risks everything, tries anything, and finds poetry in life's pleasure and pain. (IFC Films)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Kitchen Stories
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Factotum is so sly and low-key hilarious that anybody can be in on the joke.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
Factotum, for all its grim grind, is funny-serious, and smart-stupid. Just like you after four beers, and me after eight.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
Like the film itself, Mr. Dillon’s performance works through understatement.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
The result is a surprisingly satisfying film, true to Bukowski and itself, a work that manages to make the man and his profane world more palatable without compromising on who he was and what he stood for.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Eric Campos
Bukowski had a bunch of none too kind things to say about “Barfly" upon its release in the 80s, but, with Factotum, he'd do plenty of bitching and moaning as well, but deep down, Hank would approve.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
This is also an acidly funny work, even if the humor is that of a man who drinks to stave off the pain and madness of sobriety. In his finest performance since "Drugstore Cowboy," Dillon plays Chinanski with funereal grandiosity.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker Anthony Lane
The beautiful joke of Factotum is that Dillon is nobility itself.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
The film looks great on the screen, and Hamer has commissioned a terrific musical score from Kristin Asbjornsen, who has set a few of Bukowski's poems to haunting, jazzy music.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
A grim and sometimes funny examination of life on the margins and of a singular artist's world.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
In a medium generally about action and momentum, Factotum is largely concerned with inaction and inertia.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
Factotum, starring Matt Dillon and Lili Taylor in two of their best film performances, is a good movie about the L.A. underbelly, as recalled by an expert: Charles Bukowski.
Read Full Review >New York Post Kyle Smith
Each scene stumbles onto a detail of inspired absurdity or a crunchy bite of dialogue that encapsulates Chinaski's weird flavor of self-destruction.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
The American writer and poet Charles Bukowski is certainly an acquired taste, and Factotum may be just the film for determining whether one wants to acquire it.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
Warts and all, Factotum feels very close to the real thing.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett
Matt Dillon is pitch-perfect as Bukowski's alter ego Hank Chinaski.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
Despite some fine black comedy, this hovers uncertainly between the novel's tragic precision and "Barfly's" existential burlesque.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
After a while, Factotum surrenders to monotony and only the performances are likely to retain the viewer's interest.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
Bukowski fans - and they are legion - may fill in the blanks from their own knowledge of the writer and find Factotum a more complete character study than it really is. For the rest of us, there are a few laughs - and a corking hangover.
TV Guide Ken Fox
It is fragmented and episodic, and many of Bukowski's best bits are oddly truncated.
Read Full Review >Variety Leslie Felperin
Arguably one of the best adaptations of Bukowski's work, even compared with Bukowski's own script for 1997's "Barfly," deadpan timing and ace perfs bring out the morose humor and surprising warmth in the often miserabilist scribe's voice.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Melissa Levine
None of it goes anywhere. It's just stylized alcoholism with a tired wink.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
It's too bad that the film was directed by the Norwegian minimalist Bent Hamer (Kitchen Stories), who makes a fetish of building scenes around silence.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
Embracing such depths, Bukowski somehow made his art. Simulating them, Factotum just makes us queasy.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 5.7 (out of 10) based on 15 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Chris M. gave it a0:
Very rarely do I turn something off before the end but was extremely tempted. The whole thing tries so hard it is painful. Bukowski's writing has got some merit, this film has none.
Chad S. gave it a7:
When a man hits a woman, there's usually a second time. In "Factotum", it's one punch thrown by Henry(Matt Dillon), one thud on the floor by Jan the thud-maker(Lili Taylor). Unlike "Walk the Line"(the whitewashed biopic of country legend Johnny Cash), the filmmaker doesn't want to portray their iconoclastic subject(Charles Bukowski) as a saint; this is an indie, after all, "Factotum" needs street(or at least, Sundance street) cred. But surely Henry Chinaski is prone to more than one violent outburst if he's some unrelenting drunk who can't hold onto a job. No drunk just hits the bottle; he'll hit jukeboxes, glass windows, and the corporeal flesh of bar patrons and fifty-cent whores alike, especially the fifty-cent whores. "Factotum" is episodic; it's nothing more than a meandering anthology of the women Henry happens to be shacked up with as he lurches from bar to crappy job to bar. Lucid or not, Bukowski/Chinaski had enough clarity to write "Factotum", the memoir that is the basis for this agreeable depiction of the infamous poet laureate of the streets. Dillon is good, but not great as Chinaski; or maybe, the filmmaker is at fault; maybe, he fell into temptation to myth-make. In place of genuine angst and other degrees of implosive behavior, he chose to uphold the romantic notion of a writer victimized by stampeding pink elephants; the pachyderms of proof. The elephants need thicker hides. Chinaski needs to be more tortured; more "Bukowski-in-a-china-shop"-like.
Trapper gave it a0:
Absolutely the dullest/ monotone/ smoke/ booze/ ****ing movie of all time. Please--this movie was Grade E-.
Jacobsen T gave it a2:
Awful Awful Awful movie. Don't pay money to see this, or even rent it. It is in no way inspirational like so many people are saying, it has no plot, and it is not funny at all. Nothing happens, and nothing is done in the film to make the nothingness unique.
Cathy L. gave it a0:
This is the second worst movie I've ever seen.
Thomas M. gave it a5:
The acting is all top-notch, but this is a film that goes absolutely nowhere. Maybe that's the point, but if we are to be expected to remain awake throughout the films 94 minutes, some further revelations about this character might be in order. After 10 minutes, I knew everything about him that I was going to know. The rest was simply wallowing in the fetid path of this nearly moribund character.
Kurt L. gave it a9:
Matt Dillon is brilliant if not a little too pretty for the role. I like the different techniques used by the director to affect meaning. It’s definitely a more literary approach to film which is so refreshing these days. Funny and sad simultaneously.
