HIT MAN***** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Day 3

Richard Linklater's HIT MAN is a super-sexy, laugh-out-loud comedy that had its London Film Festival audience burst into spontaneous applause mid-way through.  This is a film so smart, so brilliantly written and acted, so full of uproarious mischievous joy, that everyone involved deserves accolades and awards.  

Linklater and co-writer/lead actor Glen Powell (TOP GUN: MAVERICK) based their script on a Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth: a formula that worked well for Linklater in his 2011 comedy BERNIE.  The film tells the amplified and fictionalised story of a real guy called Gary Johnson who pretended to be a hit man to entrap criminals for the local police. 

In this version of Johnson's story, we see Powell's Gary transform from contented but dull psychology professor to cool sexy hit man and discover that he is happier and more confident in his alter-ego of Ron.  Problem is, Gary invokes the jealousy of bent cop Jasper (Austin Amelio - The Walking Dead) and this causes even more complications when Jasper figures out that "Ron" has started dating one of his suspects, the glamorous Madison (Adria Arjona) who may or may not be organising a hit on her douchebag husband.

The resulting film is absolutely hilarious, as Powell transforms Gary into a variety of Rons, tailor-made to the fantasy each of his potential clients have of what a hit man would look like. He can be a Russian thug, a Maga Proud Boy, Patrick Bateman or a mop top Scouser. At a more profound level, we are seeing a man with a perfectly respectable life try on other lives for a day.  The question this movie asks is whether one can use that experience to truly change. How stable is the self, and why shouldn't we all have the chance to change?

Powell deserves all the credit for his outrageously good lead performance, but I have to say I was blown away by Adria Arjona as his love interest and Austin Amelio as Jasper. This is just an incredibly strong cast, having a blast, taking the audience with them. I loved every second, and wouldn't change a thing. Netflix have  acquired the rights but if you can, and they let you, do try and see it at the cinema. This is a film that deserves an audience reaction.

HIT MAN has a running time of 113 minutes. It played Venice, Toronto and London 2023.

THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY

It feels as though the German occupation of the Channel Islands is rather under-represented in the output of British films about World War Two. Maybe it's because it doesn't fit in with the narrative of a the last bastion of resistance, the last nation unsullied by Nazis in Europe.  At any rate, here we are, with an adaptation of the tremendously popular book of the same name by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.  I read it a few years ago, found it modestly interesting, a little too obviously attempting to move me, but still rather touching.  I could say much the same of this more or less faithful adaptation.  There's nothing too nasty or shocking or cry-making - just a generally benevolent feeling of decent people doing the decent thing.

The novel and film open after the war with a successful author (Lily James - DOWNTON ABBEY) intrigued by letters from a man in Guernsey, enquiring after a book, describing the lack of them in Guernsey after years of oppressive Nazi rule.  She eventually travels to the island to learn more about the disparate group of friends who created the society as an excuse to break curfew.  Slowly the author uncovers the tale of the enigmatic founder of the society (Jessica Brown Findlay - also DOWNTON ABBEY) and the darker side of the war.  In doing so, she falls in love with island, and the handsome man who wrote to her. 

The problem with this film is that it's so obvious. It tries to make too much of the story of what really happened to the founder, when it's actually pretty simple, if no less tragic for that.  The romance story - in both book and film - is also rather forced, and made no more credible by casting an actor who is patently not British (Michiel Huisman).  One also has a feeling of waste - insofar as good, and sometimes great actors aren't given much to do.  Jessica Brown Findlay reprises her Downton Abbey role as a feisty, rebellious but good and earnest girl.  Lily James reprises her role from almost everything she's been in, of being charming and kind.  Michiel Huisman does his usual eye candy thing.  Penelope Wilton, also Downton, also decent again... And poor Tom Courtenay is wasted. 

The upshot is that this film is a harmless way to pass the time, but very predictable, occasionally frightfully stagey and soppy.

THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL SOCIETY has a running time of 124 minutes. The movie is available to rent and own in the UK and is on Netflix elsewhere.