Hit Man "lives dangerously", darting wittily through philosophy, sex, killing, and lying. You will fall in love with it!
Hit Man completely undermines the image of the hitman, using the character played by Glen Powell as an access portal to a fantastic dimension in which killing seldom actually happens, yet it happens suddenly and systematically. In his hilarious action comedy, Richard Linklater layers the human image, creating interesting connections between his job as a university professor of philosophy and that of a police collaborator: a middle ground that becomes an end and a border, provided with an indefinite strip in which bring together all possible identities within human knowledge and fit under the label of a potential killer.
Philosophy and action in Richard Linklater's hilarious comedy
“Living dangerously”: Friedrich Nietzsche's teaching resonates in the incipit like a mantra and accompanies us throughout the film until the protagonist is pushed beyond the limits of himself. Living without reservations, with the courage necessary to fall into the meanders of the Freudian id and superego; the courage to recognize and accept yourself or to completely adhere to what you want to be or what you need to be. Richard Linklater and Glen Powell, who also wrote the screenplay based on an article written by Skip Hollandsworth and published in Texas Monthly magazine, intertwine philosophy and action by sewing on the protagonist Gary Johnson a multitude of masks that provide the actor with a stage perfect for extrapolating all its theatricality. Powell's talent flows explosively and excitingly, surprising us with every joke and making us fall in love with every mask of his.
We witness the programmatic change of a man, the stubbornness with which he insinuates himself into the evolution (or involution) of himself. Gary Johnson is the derivative figure of everything that would like, could, and should be, a malleable shell also aesthetically, which provides a graphic ploy that explodes in uncontrolled hilarity, while underlining the discomfort in existence of each of us.
We trace Freud's philosophy as well as modern psychology and go beyond the veneer of the visible, finding in the courage to kill that fury that rhymes with the ability to feel authentic passions, in sex and violence the aftertaste of a primitive instinct and uncontrollable, in rationality the methodical and calm cage of being.
Killing is the name of the game in Hit Man, but it's more complicated than you might imagine
What is legal and what is not? Hit Man offers us an extravagant story, anchored to other stories in an ingenious and graceful Chinese box mechanism. Killing is the rule that supports the entire narrative structure and you don't necessarily have to take up the gun: you eliminate a part of yourself every day, to please others, to love yourself a little more, to adapt to the world. Murder even transcends violence, transforming itself into civilization, into an action necessary for the evolution of the species.
Once again the author of works such as Boyhood and Apollo 10 and a Half distorts reality with fiction, giving the viewer a vision that intrudes on human reflexivity, ironically destroying all preconceptions about the figure of the hitman and burying it with a chain of jokes and hilarious situations all the negativity possible. Even normality, seen from the perspective of protagonist Gary Johnson, becomes palatable.
But Hit Man wouldn't be the film it is without the presence of a spectacular cast, capable of giving soul to characters who know how to make themselves loved even when they might be detestable. Adria Arjona has a formidable charisma, just like Austin Amelio and the rest of the cast (Retta, Molly Bernard, Ritchie Montgomery, Gralen Bryant Banks, Mike Markoff, Kate Adair, Jordan Salloum, Richard Robichaux), so close-knit and affable, it's not at all less. Graham Reynolds' music revolves pleasantly over the images, even if the most appreciable piece is not made of notes but of mimicry and phrases. In fact, there is a scene in which Adria Arjona and Glen Powell's characters engage in an unprecedented back and forth, complete with gestures and musicality that bring to mind rappers.
Hit Man: evaluation and conclusion
What to say? Richard Linklater has hit the mark once again. Hit Man redesigns the margins of black comedy with a pinch of malice and eroticism, without ever stopping playing chess with feelings and existential questions, pleasantly balancing sex, killings, and lies and making use of a rhythm that keeps you glued to the screen, a laugh after another. In the end, you will fall in love with a hitman (regardless of your tastes!) and you won't even be able to explain how it happened. Hit Man, presented Out of Competition at the 80th Venice Film Festival, is produced by AGC Studios, Aggregate Films, Barnstorm Productions, Cinetic Media, Detour Pictures, Monarch Media, ShivHans Pictures and distributed in Italy from 27 June 2024 by BIM Distribuzione.