The cinema screen is littered with drunken writers; those self-obsessed creatures who booze and moan and feel the world owes them a pass so they can articulate what everyone else is feeling. The normal person is too busy making ends meet and feeding a family to wax lyrical about the drabness of everyday life.
So do we need another exploration of sorrow and self-pity? The answer is yes and no. Yes because of an excellent low key performance by Matt Dillon as Charles Bukowski's alter-ego Henry Chinaski, the poetic loafer of his transgressional fiction novels. Dillon reminds us why he was the most exciting and talented of his brat-pack peers in the 80s and treads similar ground as he did in Gus Van Sant's Drugstore Cowboy.
No because as good a wordsmith as Bukowski was there is only so much self indulgence one can take before taking the view that his screen father does in the film; stop drinking and get a job.