may be the headliner of Richard Linklater’s , but Adria Arjona is it’s secret weapon. While her co-star tries on caricatures like clothes, swapping wigs and accents, donning fake teeth and artificial scars to earn his “last great movie star” status (he does and is, by the way), she’s got the more difficult job. As Madison Masters, an alluring young woman trapped in an abusive marriage, Arjona slyly winks at that most recognizable of noir tropes: the femme fatale.
She’s not the first bloodthirsty client to enlist the services of Powell’s Gary Johnson, a philosophy-teacher-turned-undercover-fake-hitman, but she is the most hopeless amongst the line-up, so sympathetic and morally grey that audiences will likely spend the near-two-hour film questioning her true motives. “I wanted her to be this woman that you didn’t really know what she was going to do next,” Arjona tells UPROXX. “When we first meet her, she’s in this really dark place.
She doesn’t really know where she stands or who she really is.” It’s that ambiguity that makes Arjona’s scenes with Powell so electric. Well that, and the pair’s undeniable on-screen chemistry.
Once Gary – who dons the suave exterior and deep V-necked uniform of a hit man named Ron for his first meeting with Maddy – convinces his mark to give up the and simply cut ties with her toxic ex, lines are quickly crossed. Meet-cutes turn into smoldering hook-up montages that singe the screen and that double as romanti.
