'The Limits of Control' review

Isaach De Bankolé (Credit: Teresa Isasi-Isasmendi/Focus)

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A lone, shady operative (Isaach De Bankolé) accepts a mysterious assignment that takes him from town to town across picturesque Spain en route to...somewhere. Along the way, he's visited by an enigmatic band of informants, each offering cryptic clues to his next destination, and ultimate purpose.

The buzz: The latest from damn-what-they-think filmmaker Jim Jarmusch ("Dead Man," "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai"), which automatically amps up its buzz-o-meter. It also doesn't hurt to have an A-list lineup of cameos from actors like Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray and Gael García Bernal.

The verdict: Talk about pushing the limits: This film is inflated, self-important and, ultimately, a yawn. It attempts to glean some kind of existential epiphany using a man's journey as a metaphor, and we watch him do idiosyncratic things like swallow pieces of paper with gulps of coffee and practice some kind of Tai Chi while waiting to meet his next informant. When he finally does speak to someone, we're subjected to laughably phooey yarns like "The universe has no center and no edges" and "Sometimes the reflection is far more present than the thing being reflected." (Yes, the characters actually say that. With a straight face.) It's all supposed to mean something, the film strains to tell us, but all it adds up to is beautifully photographed mumbo-jumbo. Yes, people, the Emperor has no clothes. The real control Jarmusch should have exercised was to rein in this masturbatory display of pretentious ego-tripping.

Did you know: This is De Bankolé's fourth collaboration with Jarmusch (following "Night on Earth," "Ghost Dog" and "Coffee and Cigarettes"), making him a kind of stoic De Niro to Jarmusch's offbeat Scorsese.

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