'Hit Man' briefing

3 ½ (out of 4)

            I love Richard Linklater — boy oh boy, do I — and while I could lament his career getting caught in the Netflix vortex, that this and Apollo 10 1/2 will become just another morsel of everyone’s streaming choice paralysis, I’m just content that his content is primed to please just about everyone who lays eyes on it. Hit Man doesn’t exactly blow your socks or your head off, it doesn’t exactly break new ground for the king of casual kino, but it is absurdly easygoing and effortlessly engrossing from head to toe, just kinda classic Linklater emitting wide-eyed, blissed out decency into the universe.

Humanism is a loaded term but I don’t think anyone else in modern film has quite so candidly tapped in the way things really are, fine-tuned the temperament of actual reality, all without making shit too boring, hammy or muting his mentality with mumblecore modesty. For someone whose screenwriting mantra is something along the lines of “hey maybe you can change your life for the better (or maybe it’s already alright)," Linklater makes all his contemporaries look like self-help cinema. It’s a state of mind Capra used to force his audience into, and Richard doesn’t even have to get all socialist on us to make us feel more whole and understood. In a sea of crap trying to redpill you or bluepill you (or blackpill you), he’s the one guy extending a whitepill, even if he has to divy up a movie with college philosophy lectures to help marry his rippling themes to simple diversions. Like his former Texan oddball profile, 2011’s Bernie, broke the rules for character studies, Hit Man finds Linklater’s trademark navel gazing most palatable and his storytelling most clear and considered.

He's no stranger to crafting movies about the duplicity and multiplicity of the self, the idea of a person as unfixed, and his usual jolly ethos is most literally illustrated by a fairly fictionalized Gary Johnson, the NOPD rat that repeatedly impersonated an assassin in order to arrest some seedy local folk. Like Keanu Reeves’ Bob (or is it Fred?) in his unctuous adaptation of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly, it’s good, mildly harrowing fun getting lost as to which of the police informant’s two identities dominates, regardless of any Orwellian backdrop. Glen Powell makes a multicolored display of his performative potential far exceeding his supporting charm which helped Cruise himself coast in Top Gun: Maverick — he proves beyond doubt, beyond another looming 80s legacy sequel Twisters, that he is a leading man, and a force for good outside of good looks. Linklater gave Powell some limelight already with a bit part in Fast Food Nation way back but noticeably in 2016’s Everybody Wants Some!! as the mustached, sage upperclassman to his own freshman baseball pitcher self-insert, plus there’s a brief appearance in Rick’s last Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood, a marvelous, mood-boosting return to former greatness particularly after how bad Where’d You Go, Bernadette? sucked. Meanwhile his co-star Adria Arjona turns heads as ably as she in turn makes herself a star, only a few stepping stones behind Powell — there’s a delirium to her irascible charms.

Linklater has range, confidence and a natural sense of moviemaking given his near-constant hand in the script. Hit Man may go down like nourishing nectar but the average Netflix consoomer doesn't even know how good they have it, especially with Noah Baumbach making such peerless, exclusive features as well. While this compares to say, Adam McKay or David O. Russell, and their same slack-loose true-storying that comically, flippantly eschews actuality, in Linklater’s case Hit Man ain’t some hazy boomer history lesson, he just wanted to make sure his dramatic license didn’t accidentally have the masses believing Gary is a murderer. As a summer distraction so spry and feathery, it’s incredible how darn nerve-wracking the film becomes by its last act, pushing the undercover moonlighting and red-hot rendezvous’ to their breaking point. The film never gets too pleased with itself (even if the meet-cute pushes it) or too out of hand — Richard and Glen’s screenplay is exceedingly clever, populated by strong supporting characters and has a handy way of detailing the veracity of deceit. Hit Man neatly illustrates the subjective capacity to take advantage of how narrowly people see you (or don’t) and work the edges of perception, then bottles the idea via new parents and the way they communicate the story of their lives together to their gullible children, hammering home personal narrative’s and the natural naiveté of others.

You think it’s fluff (you’re right) but goddamn it’s the most assertively old-fashioned, unashamedly sexy (not interrupted by credits or bickering like the Before sequels), mathematically funny and most unexpectedly suspenseful fluff in a long while. It’s uncomplicated and free to fictionalize a real guy without worrying about interrupting what could make a good rom-com thriller — the writing is pinpoint, the camerawork is sharp, the performances are just shy of perfection and the stranger-than-fiction headline-ripping is a mischievous springboard for a frothy cocktail of romance and duplicitous noir tropes (not to mention the history of fem-dom couples from hell like Gun Crazy, Natural Born Killers and possibly Intolerable Cruelty), all drenched in Linklater’s typical glaze of sensible sunniness and humming, positive vibes. Sadly his most marketable movie in ages is a Netflix prisoner foremost, but with a TIFF premiere and fresh star power in Powell, there’s enough prestige and eyeballs to make for Linklater’s most appreciably mainstream moment since, what School of Rock?

All to say is there’s no mutual exclusion between “lighter” movies and art. Try-hard or “try harder,” serious or comedic, it will all wither in the wake of genuine intent, considered craft, particularly the kind of infectious spirit that makes you think of Woody Allen and Billy Wilder and some of most benevolent filmmaking souls ever to play the game. He hasn’t made something huge since Boyhood (hey, he’s busy with 20 more years of adapting Merrily We Roll Along!) but disregarding Bernadette, this, Apollo and Everybody Wants Some!! are a decade’s proof aplenty of Linklater’s enduring versatility and lust-for-life chutzpah.