he phrase Factotum is defined as a man of many occupations and master of none. But in the film based on the autobiographical novel by hard-drinking Los Angeles cult poet, Charles Bukowski, Matt Dillon shows how it's done.

Dillon plays Bukowski's alter ego Henry Chinaski, a drinking, womanizing, gambling train wreck of a man who, within the movie's 90 minutes, slacks his way through one bad job after another - at an ice factory, a pickle factory, a bicycle supply warehouse and a brake shoe packing company - so he can devote more time to drinking.

With a script co-written by Jim Jarmusch producer Jim Stark, Factotum was directed by Norwegian filmmaker Bent Hamer (Kitchen Stories), and he views drinking life as not as an option but as an obligation. But the film should strike a chord with Beatnik devotees of the Mickey Rourke movie called Barfly, also riffed from Bukowski's novel. However, this Chinaski, as envisioned by Dillon, is a low-key beery performance that cuts closer to the author's literary state of mind than any before. He captures both the body language of a committed drinker and the speech patterns of a true drunk.

Factotum opens with Henry being fired from his job driving an ice truck after he stops in a bar long enough for the ice to melt. He thusly finds work in various dirt-bottom levels, but none of the jobs mean more than a paycheck to drink up and carry on with his pathetic life. He gets job, loses it, drinks, writes, fucks, repeats.