The writings of Charles Bukowski are an acquired taste. Praised by some critics as intuitive literary genius and derided by others as the ramblings of a serious alcoholic with delusions of literary grandeur, one simple fact remains. He hit on a collective nerve that had little to do with alcoholism, womanizing or gambling - it had to do with pursuing a life well lived. He never apologized for his shortcomings - he reveled in them.

Factotum, the movie, doesn't stray far from that premise. Where it differs is in its Scandinavian approach to the source material. The American directorial debut of acclaimed Norwegian director Bent Haner, Factotum springboards Bukowski's early days into an allegorical everyman's tale in which the protagonist never fully realizes redemption.

Matt Dillon portrays Hank Chinaski (ostensibly Bukowski's alter ego) as a man disconnected from the realities of the world. His only passion in life is writing, and he's not all that passionate about that. He jots down his thoughts occasionally, but women, menial jobs, horse tracks, and seedy bars distract him from his efforts. He's a factotum, a person who wanders aimlessly from job to job. "I just want to get my paycheck and get drunk," he tells an employer after being fired from one of several jobs.

It would be far too easy to discount Factotum as plotless rambling. To do so, however, would be nothing less than a surrender to the banalities of big budget movies. This is not a film driven by plot so much as it is by character, and in that regard, it shines. In what may be his finest performance to date, Dillon imbues the Chinaski character (read that Bukowski) with a stoic resignation towards the obstacles that confront him.

Most of those obstacles, of course, are roadblocks of his own making — his refusal to compromise to anyone or anything besides his vices-- but he never lets them overcome his singular ambition of becoming a published writer. When he's not boozing or playing the horses, he's scribbling random thoughts on a yellow legal pad, and dropping his manuscripts in the mail, with fruitless results.

Accompanying Chinaski through much of the film is the equally besotted Jan, (Lili Taylor, Six Feet Under). Their relationship, based mostly on their mutual alcoholism is, as one would expect, rocky at best. But at its core, it's based more on a disregard for society's expectations than chemical dependency. The bond the pair share supercedes the haze in how their days and nights are spent. In one particularly amusing scene, they're awakened in the middle of the night by the commotion of a fire in their apartment block. They merely shrug it off, and go back to sleep.

It's all set in a surreal version of Los Angeles, bereft of sun and palm trees, or even much of a populace. It's a desolate, gray place (with seamier sections of Minneapolis filling in for El Lay), seen through the eyes of the isolated. In Bukowski/Chanefski's world, "political correctness" is a term that doesn't exist - people smoke openly in offices, people drunkedly wander deserted streets and random fisticuffs go largely unnoticed. Even the time frame is uncertain - working class sixties mores juxtapose with PT Cruisers and computers in an assembly line world where automation has yet to replace the working grunt.