Hit Man: Scores a bullseye

Hit Man (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for sexual content, occasional violence and relentless profanity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

This one’s too much fun.

 

Richard Linklater has enjoyed an impressively varied career during his four decades as a self-taught writer/director, covering all manner of genres, styles and approaches. Even his lesser efforts are interesting in some way, and his gems are choice.

 

While posing as an assasin-for-hire named Ron, Gary (Glen Powell) discovers that his
newest "client," Madison (Adria Arjona) is much more complicated than his usual marks.

Hit Man is a ruby.

Linklater and star Glen Powell — rising rapidly into the A-list stratosphere — collaborated on this scripted adaptation of Skip Hollandsworth’s mesmerizing 2001 Texas Monthly non-fiction article. The film’s tone is cheeky from an initial promise that “What you’re about to see is a somewhat true story,” and it gets more audacious by the minute.

 

What’s truly amazing is the degree to which this film’s events are factual ... but do yourself a favor: Watch it first, before looking up Hollandsworth’s magazine piece. (Which, I promise, you’ll definitely want to do.)

 

Many of the true portions come under the heading of You Simply Couldn’t Make Up Stuff Like This.

 

Gary Johnson (Powell) is the epitome of mundane. He teaches philosophy and psychology at the University of New Orleans, where his students snicker over the fact that he drives a Honda Civic. He lives with two cats — named Id and Ego, of course — feeds birds, and carefully spray-waters his houseplants. His reading leans toward Carl Jung; a copy of Memories, Dreams, Reflections rests on his desk.

 

His very appearance is dull, thanks to Juliana Hoffpauir’s crafty costume design and Ally Vickers’ hair styling. Add the baggy jorts and unflattering glasses, and Gary looks like a total dweeb ... which, given Powell’s actual hunky self, is rather astonishing.

 

Gary does have a side hustle: He’s an electronics whiz, and for some time has assisted the New Orleans police with surveillance equipment and cleverly concealed bugs. His frequent partners during such assignments are cops Claudette (stand-up veteran Retta) and Phil (Sanjay Rao), a hilariously understated Mutt ’n’ Jeff duo who trade dry quips.

 

Their frequent targets involve ordinary citizens, who — fed up with a spouse, family member or business partner — want to hire a contract killer to, um, take care of the problem. Permanently. They invariably ask “disreputable types” — topless dancers, bar bouncers, bail bondsmen — for a “reference” ... at which point, said individuals usually contact the cops, who set up a sting. The mark’s lethal desire must be spoken aloud, and money must change hands.

 

Fellow cop Jasper (Austin Amelio) traditionally has played the “hit man” role; he’s smarmy enough to look the part.

Everybody Wants Some: College daze

Everybody Wants Some (2016) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for relentless profanity, drug use, sexual candor and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang

Boys will be boys ... and it’s a wonder girls will have anything to do with them.

Texas-born writer/director Richard Linklater hearkens back to his cinematic roots with this new laid-back comedy, which he regards as a “spiritual sequel” to his career-making 1993 hit, Dazed and Confused. That film, set in May 1976, followed the antics of small-town high school kids during their final day of class; this one spends three days in September 1980, during the long weekend preceding the first day of college.

Having commandeered a table at the local disco, Jake (Blake Jenner, center) and his new
friends — from left, Finn (Glen Powell), Willoughby (Wyatt Russell), Dale (J. Quinton
Johnson) and Plummer (Temple Baker) — assess the field to determine which young
ladies are worth pursuing.

The goals — getting drunk, stoned and indulging in recreational sex — haven’t changed, nor has the execution: Although Linklater typically begins with carefully dialogued scripts, he encourages his cast members to expand and improvise, as they become more “in tune” with their characters. The result feels spontaneous and organic, like a well-rehearsed play that has grown from humbler origins.

That said, such riffing isn’t always successful. Many of the guys here feel goofily authentic, their conversation and antics what we’d expect from early ’80s college jocks. A few, however, are way over the top, the young actors in question trying much too hard. By the same token, some of the unstructured interactions sorta drift off into space, never really justifying their existence.

At just a few minutes shy of two full hours, Everybody Wants Some also starts to feel a bit tedious, its episodic nature gradually wearing out its welcome. Better that Linklater and editor Sandra Adair had trimmed more judiciously, and left us wanting more.

Even so, it’s hard to resist the film’s larkish charm, and that of its young cast. At its best moments — which is most of the time — Linklater’s unabashedly autobiographical ode to his own college experience is both fun and funny.

The setting is Southeast Texas State University, where incoming freshman Jake Bradford (Blake Jenner) has left his small-town roots to become one of the newest members of STU’s baseball team. That allows him the best of all possible perks: a room in one of the school’s two frat-like “baseball houses,” far removed from the cramped, apartment-like dorms in which most new students are shoveled.

Jake quickly finds himself one of the low men in a pecking order dominated by seniors McReynolds (Tyler Hoechlin) and Roper (Ryan Guzman), who view it as their responsibility to squash the prima donna instincts of newbies who may have been star athletes in high school, but now are no more than scramblers amid peers who all were stars at their respective schools.