Richard Linklaterthe director of the trilogy Before dawn (which premiered every 9 years; there will be no more stories between Jesse -Ethan Hawke- and Céline -Julie Delpy-) and director of School of Rock returns with a story, incredibly based on a real character, Gary Johnson, a philosophy professor who, to earn a few more dollars, covertly helps the New Orleans police catch criminals.
How? They’re actually people who want to hire a hitman to eliminate someone.
Linklater co-wrote the script with his friend and leading actor, Glen Powell (Hangman in Top Gun: Maverick; the comedy With everyone except you), who plays Gary, who has, as they say at some point, a “perfectly forgettable face,” even though he dresses up for meetings with “clients.”
The thing is that during an operation, the police officer who normally plays the fake hitman cannot do the job, and the only option is to send him. And this is how this modest and common guy acquires a new identity in front of clients, interpreting what he understands to be the routine of a hitman.
In this film, Glen Powell combines romantic comedy, as in “With Everyone But You” and action cinema (“Top Gun: Maverick”). Photos Diamond Films
He then becomes Ron and adapts his performance to each client. The problem arises when he meets Madison (Adria Arjona, the daughter of the Guatemalan musician), a girl who is experiencing the worst, with an abusive and jealous husband. And Ron, who is being recorded in her conversation, tries to convince her not to kill her husband.
The film is based on a note published in Texas Monthlyabout a Houston police officer who made a career as the most prolific fake hitman.
Glen Powell makes the incredible believable
Although the idea of the protagonist being trapped in a falsehood is not exactly something new, it is Powell’s performance that makes it more believable, if the term fits.
With Ricardo Arjona’s daughter, who plays a woman who wants to kill her husband.
There are many more verbal jokes than body gags, such as “chivalry may be dead, but I didn’t kill it.” hit manas is its original title, has Linklater’s stamp on that relationship, that chemistry that is formed between Glen Powell and Adria Arjona, which is quite similar to that of Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in the aforementioned trilogy.
And most likely the audience in the audience will end up falling in love with these characters, as happened with George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez in A dangerous romanceor with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in Mr and Mrs smith. It is no coincidence that both films, thrillers with humor, were filmed at the end of the ’90s and the beginning of this 21st century. It’s just that Linklater’s way of filming makes Accomplices to deception an old-fashioned film, remembering those action comedies of the ’90s, a cinema until now quite far removed from the director of Boyhood. Moments of a life.
“Accomplices to deception”
Comedy/Crime. United States, 2023. Original title: “Hitman”. 115′, SAM 13 R. Of: Richard Linklater. With: Glen Powell, Adria Arjona, Austin Amelio, Retta, Sanjay Rao. Rooms: Hoyts Abasto and Unicenter, Cinemark Palermo, Cinépolis Recoleta, Showcase Belgrano.
