The Limits of Control

The Limits of Control (2009) is a deliberately slow crime thriller by Jim Jarmusch — watch it online on iFILM. Isaac de Bankolé plays the Lone Man, a hired operative moving through Spain without a name, without small talk, and without a single deviation from his route.

At each stop, strangers hand him matchboxes with coded instructions. Tilda Swinton, John Hurt, Gael García Bernal and Bill Murray each appear for a scene — long enough to deliver a monologue about film, painting, or the nature of reality — then vanish. The mission only comes into focus at the very end.

Jarmusch shot the film with cinematographer Christopher Doyle and made silence the primary language. It is not a thriller in the conventional sense; it is a formal exercise in patience and perception. Stream The Limits of Control online on iFILM.