The Limits of Control

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source: The Limits of Control

"The Limits of Control" enters the crowded category of films with marginally presumptuous titles that are unhinged from the narrative that follows it. The movie's title, however, aptly describes what the audience experiences when being tortuously subjected to watching it. The reticent main character spends very little energy deviating from its meandering mission, being almost entirely focused in the task at hand. What the task is, however, remains unclear for most of the film, attempting to use story-telling gadgetry instead of building characters or actually developing a story line. The character we follow lives only on double coffees, Tai-Chi and small pieces of paper while on a mission, trying to portray a man in control of the self - a control so complete as to not need food, sex or sleep; yet quickly lost when served the wrong coffee. Portraying these few only traits possessed by the character is blundered by the main actor, a weak performance that is mirrored by several other cast members, including, disappointedly, Bill Murray. Gael Garcia Bernal is one of the few enticing performances and bright spots, but sadly it's limited to a minor role out of many in the movie. For the most part, the movie is a collection of incoherent elements, weakly performed by most of its actors and slowly untold by its director.

I like indie films - usually. Sometimes I wonder if the artist is really saying anything or being pretentious and rubbing our face in it. I can certainly see where students of film, artists, may find this interesting or meaningful. I do not fall in that category. **Spolier** "Life is dirt" is one of the few lines in the whole movie and it is spoken at the very beginning. This leads me to believe that the film is made at our expense. To sit and watch people walking for minutes, staring at paintings, drinking coffee on and on and on. In movies, seconds are minutes. I also understand some people prefer cerebral movies as opposed to Hollywood pop corn blockbusters. This artists movie may appeal to you in the way that a Campbell Soup can painting is considered art. When this movie ended, I really only had one question. If I had paid money to see this in a theater, would I have walked out? Fortunately, I watched the DVD and had access to the FF button. Sorry to offend all of the artsy folks out there, but Limits of Control just rubs your face in it.

I rented this movie on the assumption the words on the cover - "A thriller written and directed by acclaimed filmmaker Jarmusch..." - were promising, but I found it excruciatingly slow, derivative, unbelievably pretentious, repetitive and ultimately a bore. The main character speaks, at most, ten words; he is to be seen as interesting because he always orders two espressos and crumples and swallows bits of paper - containing (presumably) directions, addresses or orders - with one of the espressos. Others, the strangers he meets, say a few cryptic words on film, art, music...and leave. Two refrains about "life not being worth anything" and "the cemetery the only place where reality is" are repeatedly hammered into our philistine heads in different ways, while the main character walks and travels around the country on some mission...The only remedy half-way through, or earlier, is to fast-forward. Nothing is lost by doing so because this movie is actually only about half an hour long. The rest of the two hours is taken up by re-filming the first half hour with very slight variations, the idea being perhaps to induce viewers to "get it" after all. At any rate, don't skip the trio rehearsing in the bar - the only worthwhile item in an otherwise empty film experience.

A big WTF!!!? (Warning Spoilers) This is by far one of the most boring, plodding, nonsense movie i've seen. I fell asleep halfway through, made a mistake of rewinding to see what (I did not) miss and ended up fast forwarding the movie a lot. The film is broken up into 4 parts for me. 1) Introducing the protagonist - an assassin given a mission 2) The ending of the film 3) the assassin meeting several contacts throughout the film (I will explain this nonsense below) and 4) In between meeting his contacts, long, long very long and boring shots of him walking, walking and more walking... climbing stairs... sleeping with his clothes on.. doing tai-chi in the morning... drinking 2 cups of espresso.. oh and if not walking, riding in a cab or a truck. This is where i hit FF button. The contacts he meets seem like nonsense to me. There was really no rhyme or reason why he couldn't just have been given his target at the beginning of the movie. What was the use of the other contacts? Each one spouted out philosophical nonsense about different subjects.. life, death, molecules, b&w films, and the universe. Then they exchange match boxes, assassin opens his and there's a piece of paper with gibberish written on it - which was never ever explained what the hell the paper was - he crumples and swallows it with one of his 2 cups of espressos he always orders. Then they give him some weird instructions - "The bread will find you.." or "look for violin.." or "the guitar will speak to you.." or something unclear but he ends up finding these places. I did get a bit interested when some of the philosophical nonsense started appearing in some scenes - quotes from his contacts are showing up suddenly - a flamenco singer sings them, it's painted on the tailgate of a truck, other characters spew them in Spanish, etc. OK, so maybe this movie is about the assassin slowly going crazy from being too anal in his job? Nah!! didn't go there. I kept watching, albeit with the FF button, hoping for a big ending ala Luc Besson's Leon (the Professional) but didn't get that even. His target is inside a walled, barb-wired house w/ dozens of bodyguards. So OK, we're getting a sneaking moment or gun blazing scene here - nope - he is suddenly inside the room of his target -- WTF!!!!!??? When asked how he got in he simply says, "I imagined it." WHAT!!? OK maybe this guy is death? an alien? a psychic? NOPE not even. Maybe the scraps of paper from the match boxes he gets that he eats was giving him super power to "imagine" himself to his victim's room? Who knows. He completes his mission in a boring way, gets back into his street clothes and movie ends. So the movie could be assassin who has strict set of behaviour slowly losing his mind OR the "contacts" were previous victims he had that he's meeting? Who knows. Save yourself from the boredom and 1.5 hours of your life. The only "Limits of Control" in this movie is me being pushed to the limits of grabbing my remote control and hitting OFF button. I did the next best thing - hit Fast Forward, but that in the end wasn't enough.

Broken Flowers is one of the best movies of the last years. It was slow, had a gentle story, played with the imagination of the audience, was concentrating on beautiful pictures and at every moment showed a tough piece of reality. And now this: Jim Jarmush makes himself look like a 20 year old student who is staggering through a few fragments of new ideas, creating unnecessary (bohemian) figures, that approach the main character out of nowhere, babble about art, science, movies, music and all follow the same uninspired scheme. I had to wait 40 minutes to get the "riddle" resolved - of course, it is imagination that finally kills the evil realist, who comes along like a mixture of a modern financial mafia guy. Or is it the inner imagination struggling against the coldness of the own pragmatic, realistic personality? Isn't that a plot we have seen numerous times before - in much better films? The whole thing tries to be subtle and is so blunt and boring, that it is unbelievable that it was made by the same person who did Dead Man, Ghost Dog, Broken Flowers. I am disappointed. And bored. And currently I do not know, which is the worse feeling of the two.

I've just sat through this entire movie and I've got no clue what it was even about. I have to admit, it was far too boring for me to devote 100% of my attention, but that's no excuse. The movie consists mostly of the lead character's adventures of going from supposed criminal to supposed criminal exchanging matchbooks with different things in them. He hardly says a word throughout the whole flick. I think you hear more (or hopefully you don't) from him in the last 10 minutes of the movie than you do the first hour and forty. The rest of the dialogue is just the other characters attempting to have conversations with him that turn out to be almost entirely one-sided. There was some decent nudity from a large (not to mention very lop-sided} breasted woman who was pretty cute, unfortunately that's the only good thing I can say about it. Well, I've already devoted far too much time to this movie, I just hope this helps to save a bit of yours. I'd love to know how this movie got an IMDb rating of 6.6!!!! Sonsabitches! Hope your damned legs grow together!

If you're looking for a great story, you'd better go read a book. If you think you can make up your own story, maybe you can watch this film. Before I saw it, I looked for reviews on the net. People spoke about too little dialogue, slowness and even misuse of great actors. So I was a bit prepared and knew what I could or could not expect. This wasn't bad, but after watching it and reading some reviews again, it became very clear to me that this film is very personal. Even some Jarmusch fans seemed to have trouble with the film. But to me, it was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. I like films who really use the imagery instead of just trying to tell a story. To me that's the whole purpose of a movie; visual composition, beautiful color, appropriate music and great characters. And it's not so important if you don't get the characters or understand what they say, as long as you feel it's a part of their character. It's like a picture of someone you don't know, and you make up your own story about them. The dialogues are short, yes, but that only adds to the fact that you can add more of your own imagination to the characters. And still, the dialogues were interesting enough to me, but like I said it's really personal. It's probably very important how you feel, where you stand in life, and what you think the priorities are. But to me everything came together. I've been waiting very long for something special like this. I would give it a ten, but you never know what's coming around the corner.

I'm not going to waste anyone's time with subjective yammering, whether it be positive ("a cinematic tour de force!") or negative ("pretentious artsy fluff!") because, let's face it, those comments don't mean squat to anyone but the person saying it. Instead, just rifle through this list of movies and if you liked any of them, you'll probably like this movie. "Tetro" (director Francis Ford Coppola, 2009), "Broken Flowers" (director Jim Jarmusch, 2005), "Before It Had a Name" (director Giada Colagrande, 2005), "A Scene at the Sea" (director Takeshi Kitano, 1991), "Der Himmel über Berlin" a.k.a. "Wings of Desire" (director Wim Wenders, 1987), "Paris, Texas" (director Wim Wenders, 1984). If you haven't heard of, or seen, any of those then just bear in mind that "Limits of Control", like the movies mentioned above, is very slow, almost uneventful, without a lot of revealing dialogue to carry the story. These stories are told in images, and it can be a real challenge keeping up, not because there are a lot of crazy twists and turns, but because there's almost nothing. I could sum up the plot of this movie in 8 words: "a day in the life of a hit-man". But if you're up for a challenge, give it a shot.