The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch, 2009)

By the time Issach de Bankole's character (the film's credits call him the "Lone Man") orders two separate cups of espresso, extracts a note written in code from a Le Boxer matchbox and washes it down with a gulp of coffee for the third time, it becomes obvious The Limits of Control is an exercise in repetition. There's always the same greeting exchanged between the Lone Man and the enigmatic strangers he encounters (in Spanish "you don't speak Spanish, do you?"). Conversations always follow the same basic template with the main theme varied each time (sometimes it's art, sometimes it's science or bohemians). The Lone Man is always stoic, never smiles, never has sex while he is on the job and never uses a cell phone, and (for no apparent reason at all) always eats the note after he reads it. We wait in earnest for something else to happen, for the pattern to change up, but what's ironic is that even when it finally does--when the Lone Man reaches his destination, carries out his mission, and returns home extracting this time a blank note from a Le Boxer matchbox--it feels strangely predictable too. Recall Down by Law and we wonder if Jarmusch has lost his sense of the outlandish, the outrageous, the witty.