In a career that now encompasses 22 features, director Richard Linklater has tackled myriad subjects and worlds: high school, Orson Welles, weirdos, lovers, ballplayers, boyhood. But until he made “Hit Man,” he’d never dabbled in the dark arts of contract killing — even if his meek main character is only pretending to be an elite assassin. But what’s very real about this comedy-thriller-love story, which arrives on Netflix on Friday, is that it represents the director’s continued willingness to keep trying new things, to never settle on a fixed idea of the kinds of movies he makes.
Never before has Linklater done a picture so awash in the pleasures of play-acting and sultry sex. “For this story to work, it’s got to be sexy,” he says over Zoom from Austin, Texas. “It’s got to be hot sex — that’s what makes people do crazy, dangerous things.
You can stay home alone in your room with your cats, and none of this will ever befall you — but if you step out and go into that world, you’re going to have to deal with those consequences. But it’s worth the risk. That’s the point of the movie: Still do that, err on that side, even if there’ll be a little body count at the end of it.
” Linklater, who turns 64 this summer, is a filmmaker who lives in the real world. His body of work accentuates the casual poetry of the everyday, his movies lauded for their breezy naturalness. Which is why it’s such a welcome surprise when he operates in a more fancifu.
