It seems even the most ardent followers of Jim Jarmusch’s cinema of deadpan cool found his purposefully cryptic and deflated thriller The Limits of Control something of a chore to sit through. I’m meeting Jarmusch halfway on this one. There’s a lot to like about it, not the least his “anti-action, anti-thriller, anti-drama” approach. The repetition of Isaach De Bankole’s absurd routine in the film, from his ordering of double expressos to his strange meetings that begin with characters asking “You don’t speak Spanish, do you?”, produce a certain Zen-like hypnotic groove once you’re locked into it. And Chris Doyle’s lensing is, as usual, beyond reproach, adding to the dreamy and lulling tone of Jarmusch’s narrative abstraction. But the elliptical, puzzlingly scripted encounters – with a pretty good supporting cast, including Tida Swinton, John Hurt, Gael Garcia Bernal – are at times too cool and hipsterish (I know I know, this is Jarmusch we’re talking about), with the movie-referencing dialogue and philosophizing jarring against the glacial silences that fill the other parts of the movie. A mixed bag, though one I wouldn't be adverse to revisiting in the future.