There's no getting around the fact that Matt Dillon cannot possibly make himself ugly enough to look anything like Bukowski actually did, but he does his best to capture the writer's posture and way of carrying himself. If the end result does not resemble Bukowski as much as it does Humphrey Bogart, it is only because Matt Dillon is a good-looking actor. I suppose he could have tried to match Buk's voice more though. In all fairness, the film does try to capture some of Bukowski's harsher edges (his violence against women for example), in an effort to counteract the sense of sterilization brought about by the generally good-looking performers (sure, Lili Taylor may not be the best-looking actress around, but she's still in much better shape than a wino like she depicts would be). The use of very formal, long camera takes is an unexpected but interesting choice (and shows the film's Scandinavian roots), although the distance it brings adds a further sense of cleanliness into what is essentially very gritty subject matter. Of course, the film is supposed to be a comedy, and this camera technique does help to give the film a deadpan Jarmusch/Kaurismaki edge to it (although it still isn't ecstatically funny). Oddly, the screenplay somehow feels over-reverent of Bukowski in some aspects (full Bukowski poems are heard, read by Dillon in a notably un-Bukowski like voice, on the soundtrack), and at the same time too broadly drawn. With it's rambling, episodic structure and predominant focus on Bukowski's relationships with women, the film at times begins to resemble not so much a specific biography but rather any number of other stories about aimless twenty-something aspiring artist types and their relationship troubles (think "Jesus Son"). Luckily in my case, I have a naturally high affinity for these types of stories anyway, so it didn't bother me as it might someone more tired of these "angst and anomie among the young and bohemian" tales. Still, as far as on-screen Bukowski goes, your best bets are documentaries. The recent "Bukowski: Born Into This" is the most expansive, detailed, and definitive, but Barbet Schroeder's four-hour "Bukowski Tapes" is also worth seeing for it's intimate, in-depth nature, although it is exhausting and presented in a way that becomes repetitive. The "Bukowski At Bellevue" live performance video is interesting but unessential if you know the poems. But if fictional Buk is what you're after, I'd say that "Factotum" is definitely the way to go, relative to the limited choices that exist. As far as I'm concerned, "Barfly" is blandly crafted and over-acted, essentially reducing Bukowski to a drunken buffoon. "Tales of Ordinary Madness" is generally considered atrocious, though I have only seen a few minutes of it myself. "Crazy Love" is not really about Bukowski at all, and is a terrible film to boot. "Factotum" perhaps merely trades one cliché vision of Bukowski for another (in "Factotum"'s case, Bukowski as a sort of suave, troubled yet romantic working-class genius), but at least "Factotum"'s I can not only tolerate, but find enjoyable watching.