His name is Gary Johnson, he lives in Houston, Texas and in his long career he was hired to kill around sixty people. Except that he was never a real killer but a strange type of freelancer who helped the Houston police to frame possible instigators of contract killings. Gary Johnson really existed and his exploits were told by Skip Hollandsworth in an article that appeared years ago in Texas Monthly magazine. And now this story has become a film.
During the pandemic Glen Powell, the strong-jawed handsome man from Top Gun: Maverick, stumbled upon the article and became convinced that it would be perfect for a movie. He contacted Richard Linklater, who had directed him in Everybody Wants Something, and proposed the extraordinary story of a killer who isn’t a killer. After some hesitation on the part of the director, the deal was concluded. «At the beginning – says the director of Before Sunrise – I didn’t understand how that article could become a film, but Glen convinced me and we wrote down the script together. On the other hand we had a lot of free time in those days.”
So today Hit Man – Killer by chance arrives in the US, in some theaters and on Netflix (in Italy it will be in theaters on June 27), which stars Glenn Powell in the role of Gary Johnson and Adria Arjona in the role of a potential client , One of many. But the only one that Gary Johnson, instead of framing her with an exchange of money and the audio recording of her desire to kill, will convince to desist from the murderous intent. The woman, a victim of domestic violence, was only terrified of the idea of leaving a man who promised her death if she abandoned the marital home. And Gary will persuade her to rely on the protection of social services.
Up to this point the film is the transposition into images of the article in the Texan magazine, except for the fact that, instead of Houston, the story is set in New Orleans. But then the film takes a fictionalized turn that delivers the audience a pleasant and entertaining, even romantic, comedy. After all, Linklater is the director of the “Before trilogy”: Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight, milestones of 90s romantic cinema, with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy.
«The real Gary Johnson – explains Glenn Powell who is also the producer of the film – was a loner, he lived with his two cats in a small single apartment on the outskirts of Houston. He was an extraordinary character, he was a philosophy teacher in the morning and a police collaborator in his free time. He had no room for a family or stable affection. In telling his story we wanted to give him a life of relationships, we found him a girlfriend.” Linklater explains: «We were sitting on a basis of reality but we took off from there». What fascinated the director and protagonist of this strange character is his duality. «He was an ordinary travet, a middle-aged man, alone, a teacher without great charisma. However, when he wore his many disguises and entered into his various identities as a killer, he transformed. In front of the police cameras and microphones he became the most interesting man in the world.”
Appreciated with a standing ovation at the Sundance Film Festival last January, the film was at the Venice Film Festival in September, «where there were four films that told about contract killers and I spent the time saying that no, ours didn’t it was really a film about a contract killer, in fact it was the opposite,” concludes Linklater.
At the Toronto Film Festival, a few days later, Netflix decided to buy it, for 20 million dollars. After a brief episode at the cinema in the United States, the story of a murderer who never killed anyone now arrives in streaming.
