‘SOMETIMES I like films where people just sit there not saying any thing,” says a character in hipster icon Jim Jar musch’s latest snoozer, “The Limits of Control.”
These lines are delivered in a white wig and a cowboy hat by Tilda Swinton, who also observes that “the best films are like dreams you’re never really sure you had.”
And so it goes in this comic thriller, neither funny nor thrilling, although it seems to have pleased some of my critical colleagues who like to congratulate themselves for picking out cultural references — William S. Burroughs, John Boorman and Arthur Rimbaud, for starters.
This is one of those movies that’s too cool to have a plot.
The impassive Isaach De Bankole, a native of the Ivory Coast who is a regular member of Jarmusch’s repertory company, plays a hit man who arrives in Madrid on a mission.
Mostly, he sits in iridescent silk suits in cafes at various locales contemplating two cups of espresso, or occasionally visiting a museum.
From time to time, an unidentified stranger — played by John Hurt and Gael Garcia Bernal, among others — will sit down, and they will exchange matchboxes, and the stranger will give inscrutable instructions.
Sample: “Wait three days until you see the bread. The guitar will find you.”
The matchboxes contain slips of paper that the hit man washes down with an espresso.
There is also a mysterious beautiful woman (Paz de la Huerta), naked except for her glasses, who shares the disinterested hit man’s bed. And another he encounters on a train (Youki Kudoh of Jarmusch’s “Mystery Train”) for some metaphysical musings.
I could call this self-indulgent, but Jarmusch would probably consider that a compliment.
The film is essentially shapeless (if impeccably photographed by the great Christopher Doyle) until the final 20 minutes.
The hit man arrives in a remote area where armed guards or soldiers are guarding an American who disembarks from a helicopter we have seen hovering for the past hour.
It’s not clear whether this man — played by Bill Murray in deadpan mode — is a government official or a businessman, or exactly what he is doing in Spain.
But for whatever reason, he is the hit man’s prey.
Which makes “The Limits of Control” sound a lot more exciting than it turns out to actually be. Fans who “get” Jarmusch can feel free to add a couple of stars.
THE LIMITS OF CONTROL
Medium cool.
Running time: 116 minutes. Rated R (graphic nudity, profanity). At the Angelika, Houston and Mercer streets.