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Factotum
Metascore
71 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 25 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 21 out of 25
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 25
  3. Negative: 0 out of 25
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  1. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    91
    Factotum is so sly and low-key hilarious that anybody can be in on the joke.
  2. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marc Savlov
    89
    Factotum, for all its grim grind, is funny-serious, and smart-stupid. Just like you after four beers, and me after eight.
  3. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Eric Campos
    80
    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.
  4. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Scott Foundas
    80
    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.
  5. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    80
    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.
  6. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Manohla Dargis
    80
    Like the film itself, Mr. Dillon's performance works through understatement.
  7. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Ann Hornaday
    80
    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.
  8. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: Anthony Lane
    80
    The beautiful joke of Factotum is that Dillon is nobility itself.
  9. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Wilmington
    75
    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.
  10. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Kyle Smith
    75
    Each scene stumbles onto a detail of inspired absurdity or a crunchy bite of dialogue that encapsulates Chinaski's weird flavor of self-destruction.
  11. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Mick LaSalle
    75
    A grim and sometimes funny examination of life on the margins and of a singular artist's world.
  12. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Shawn Levy
    75
    Warts and all, Factotum feels very close to the real thing.
  13. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: Sean Axmaker
    75
    Wry and dry.
  14. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Chris Kaltenbach
    75
    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.
  15. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Nathan Rabin
    75
    In a medium generally about action and momentum, Factotum is largely concerned with inaction and inertia.
  16. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Ray Bennett
    70
    Matt Dillon is pitch-perfect as Bukowski's alter ego Hank Chinaski.
  17. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J.R. Jones
    70
    Despite some fine black comedy, this hovers uncertainly between the novel's tragic precision and "Barfly's" existential burlesque.
  18. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Elizabeth Weitzman
    63
    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.
    All this critic's reviews
  19. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    63
    It is fragmented and episodic, and many of Bukowski's best bits are oddly truncated.
  20. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Ty Burr
    63
    Looks steam-cleaned, and that can't be right.
  21. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    63
    After a while, Factotum surrenders to monotony and only the performances are likely to retain the viewer's interest.
  22. Variety
    Reviewed by: Leslie Felperin
    60
    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.
  23. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Rick Groen
    50
    Embracing such depths, Bukowski somehow made his art. Simulating them, Factotum just makes us queasy.
  24. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Owen Gleiberman
    50
    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.
  25. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Melissa Levine
    50
    None of it goes anywhere. It's just stylized alcoholism with a tired wink.
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User Reviews

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User Score
6.0 out of 10

Mixed or average reviews- based on 17 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6 out of 12
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 12
  3. Negative: 4 out of 12
  1. ChrisM.
    0
    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.… Full Review »
  2. ChadS.
    7
    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.… Full Review »
  3. Trapper
    0
    Absolutely the dullest/ monotone/ smoke/ booze/ ****ing movie of all time. Please--this movie was Grade E-.
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