The Limits of Control (2009) on Netflix
The Lone Man speaks no Spanish and works as an underground courier. The Creole briefs him at an airport and sends him to Madrid, where contacts pass him coded messages in matchboxes.
- Netflix2.9/5
- IMDb6.2/1022,039 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes43%
Trailer
Plot summary
The Lone Man is quiet, self-contained and has rules. In an airport, The Creole lays out a mission whose purpose stays unstated; the instructions are cryptic, telling him everything is subjective and to use his imagination and his skills. From there he goes to Madrid, and afterward to Seville, meeting contacts in cafés and on trains. Each meeting runs the same way: he orders two espressos, a contact arrives and asks in Spanish whether he understands the language, they speak about their own interests, and matchboxes change hands. His contains a slip of paper with a code, which he reads and eats. The codes send him on to the next meeting. A woman he keeps encountering, sometimes with nothing on and sometimes in a sheer raincoat, invites him to have sex; he says he never does while working.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Limits of Control (2009)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Jim Jarmusch began shooting The Limits of Control with only a 25-page "minimal map" instead of a finished script, and wrote the dialogue for each scene the night before it was shot.
- Jarmusch's aim was an action film with no action in it, a plot built from repeated variations, and characters with no name, past or background.
- The Limits of Control was the first of Jim Jarmusch's films set entirely outside the United States, with the story moving from Madrid by train to Seville and then to desert near Almería.
- For scenes where no suitable music existed, Jarmusch's own band Bad Rabbit recorded new songs, and The Black Angels' "You on the Run" was slowed down while keeping its pitch to fit the soundtrack.
- The 'Le Boxeur' matchboxes in the film were gifts Jarmusch had received from musicologist Louis Sarno and star Isaach de Bankolé, and the pickup truck marked "La Vida No Vale Nada" was modeled on one owned by the Clash's Joe Strummer.
- To steady himself while writing, Jarmusch used Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies deck and drew phrases like "Emphasize repetitions" and "Look closely at the most interesting details and amplify them."
