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COPYRIGHT 2006 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
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The Film File
Things are going well for Matt Dillon, which is more than you can say for Henry Chinaski. Henry is the man whom Dillon plays in "Factotum." As the title implies, Henry has never been blessed--or burdened--with steady employment. In his eyes, glazed and hooded as they are, a job is something you do to fill the hours until your next drink. Sometimes you can't wait that long; in the opening scenes, Henry, given the task of driving a refrigerated truck for an icemaking company, leaves it outside a bar, with the rear doors hanging open. His boss finds him there, and the job just melts away.
"Factotum" is delivered with aplomb by the Norwegian director Bent Hamer. Together with Jim Stark, he also wrote the screenplay, which is adapted from the work of Charles Bukowski. "Factotum" the book is a good deal more lurid than "Factotum" the motion picture; Bukowski wrote it in the first person, with his customary compound of the laid-back and the rampant, thus tempting his fans to read it as personal memoir. A fair dose of his prose survives in the script, much of it intoned by Dillon with an exhausted growl, yet Hamer never tries to conjure a visual wildness that might match the roiling temper of his hero, or the sway of his gaze. This strikes me as a wise restraint; the camera cools things down, content to view Chinaski in the third...
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