HIT MAN
Out of competition
USA, 2023 Directed by Richard Linklater Cast Glen Powell, Adria Arjona, Austin Amelio, Retta Running time 113′
Richard Linklater’s ability to embrace any genre as naturally as he does is rare on the world film scene, from the musical comedy School of Rock to the sentimental comedy of the Before Trilogy, or the existentialist, animated sci-fi A Scanner Darkly, and even sports cinema with the remake of Bad News Bears. Linklater is a versatile director with very well-defined poetics and an extreme experimenter, as evidenced by the absolute film Boyhood, shot over the course of thirteen years, with the lead actor growing up during the making. Linklater is also an incredibly fast filmmaker, with an almost near-perfect average of one film a year. The last had been the animated film Apollo 10 ½, while the previous live-action was 2019 Where’d You Go, Bernadette? with a magnificent Cate Blanchett.
Hit Man is a further stage, an action noir, but in Linklater’s style, ironic, sentimental and melancholy. The film tells of the adventures of Gary Johnson, the most in-demand professional hitman in New Orleans, a character who looks like something out of a movie but hides a secret that his clients absolutely must not discover. Unless it’s to save someone’s life, and this is the paradox of the hitman. In this case, a woman, she’s on the run from her abusive boyfriend. “The film is very loosely based on a crime story I read almost two decades ago in Texas Monthly,” Linklater revealed when introducing the film, which is having its worldwide premier out of competition at Venice 80. “It has so many different genres, going from comedy to noir to thriller, but I was most interested in examining the concept of identity.”
After Venice, Hit Man will also be pres ented at Toronto and the London Film Festival. It will also arrive in Italian theatres, distributed by BIM.
