What is so appealing about the work of Richard Linklater, a former scion of the 1990s “indie” phenomenon (Lazy, Before dawn, rebellious generation, Childhood) ? Without a doubt the regular regime that the Texan, based in Austin, continues today, at 64 years old and after thirty years of career, films that are at once original and modest, certainly inconsistent, but never worried about pulling the rug out from under the hood.
Such as, HitmanHis latest feature, presented out of competition at the 2023 Venice Film Festival, represents a kind of antidote to the inflationary crisis currently affecting American cinema. It is a simple and lively character comedy – a precise genre that has largely migrated to the small screen – in a very classic style, which mixes rich human material with a whole gallery of characters. Hitman He also belongs, as before him bernie (2011), to a vein of his cinema that could be said to be “inspired by real events”, but to better convert it into a promontory of fiction.
It all started with an article by Skip Hollandsworth, published in 2011 in the magazine Texas monthlyAbout Gary Johnson, a discreet philosophy professor from Houston who for several years played the role of a fake hitman for the local police to catch individuals willing to take the life of a loved one. Johnson, who thus contributed to making some sixty arrests, was particularly keen to develop disguises appropriate to each of the sponsors, and through them he found numerous profiles and, above all, terrifying existential impasses: husbands or wives who wanted to eliminate their spouse, employees their boss, a teenager their parents, lovers their rivals, etc. Written with its lead actor, Glen Powell, the film relocates the story to the more picturesque setting of New Orleans and addresses this unusual character in the midst of his metamorphosis.
Glen Powell Chameleon Massacre
Because Gary is first portrayed as a perfect normopath, a divorced professor with glasses who lives alone with his two cats, trapped in a boring banality, if it weren’t for the support missions he carries out for the police as an “electrician”. Called in to replace a dismissed colleague, he is bombarded into becoming the professional killer, a role he assumes with such conviction that suspects fall into his net.
Gary is made up of increasingly varied figures: one day a perfect southern hick with tattoos, the next a passionate Russian in a black leather coat or even a Nordic-skinned pervert in a turtleneck. The person giving lessons on the structure of the Freudian psyche discovers in this role of executioner a kind of “ego ideal” that releases in him a depth of calm, security, “coolness.”
You have 49.65% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
