Richard Linklater is adamant that paid assassins don't really exist, but the Hit Man filmmaker understands the fascination with contract killers and why Venice Film Festival saw four movies about them debuted on the Lido this year. He thinks our obsession taps into our darker desires…
"They're more interesting as pop culture myth, like snuff films. It can be fun and I've made a film that’s based on fiction, on myth. But hit men films aren't saying that they're real, they're just playing on all of our perception that they could be real," the Before Sunrise auteur told Total Film on a hotel roof terrace. "So the real question is why do we want to believe in them? That's the interesting part. It feels like it's one more option for all of us, maybe. I think we're all invested because we like to think we could hire one. It's on the menu: if I won the lottery I could buy that Ferrari, I could live in that house… if you screwed me over, I could have you killed."
His screwball comedy starring Glen Powell as a meek teacher who falls into playing a fake undercover hit man for the police was a hit with critics in the same festival that saw Fincher's The Killer, Harmony Korine's Aggro Dr1ft and Robert Lorenzo's The Land Of Saints And Sinners present men who murder for money.
"They're such good fictional tropes, they always have been in pulp fiction literature, movies, TV… but they're not real," the director says. He gets the appeal but he's not one to buy into it. "We want to believe things so bad, like conspiracy theories – almost every conspiracy theory is 100 percent bullshit. And in this century where we've gone off the rails I double down – I'm reading science books, I'm obsessed with data and facts. I really have less patience with just total crap."
His film, he says, is a lighthearted take on our obsession. "I like to think my movie is a complete deconstruction of the hit man - I could not make a hit man movie straight, just knowing that they're fictional."
Hit Man was co-written with Powell and is playing out of competition at Venice but was a huge hit with critics. Read our Hit Man review through the link.
