Producers: Mike Blizzard, Richard Linklater, Glen Powell, Jason Bateman and Michael Costigan  Director: Richard Linklater  Screenplay: Richard Linklater and Glen Powell   Cast: Glen Powell, Adria Arjona, Austin Amelio, Retta, Sanjay Rao, Molly Bernard, Evan Holtzman, Gralen Bryant Banks, Mike Markoff, Bryant Carroll, Morgana Shaw, Kate Adair, Martin Bats Bradford, Ritchie Montgomery, Jo-Ann Robinson, Jonas Lerway and Richard Robichaux    Distributor: Netflix

Grade: B+

Richard Linklater’s engagingly offbeat rom-com “Hit Man” serves as a nifty companion piece to his macabre 2012 comedy “Bernie.”  Both are based on real people who were profiled by Skip Hollandsworth in compulsively readable “Texas Monthly” articles.  Both spotlight virtuoso lead turns, the earlier film by Jack Black and this one by Glen Powell, who also co-wrote the script.  And both showcase the director’s consummate skill in featuring an array of wonderfully quirky characters in small roles.

But there’s one big difference: Bernie Tiede was definitely on the wrong side of the law; Gary Johnson is working for the police, at least—in this telling—until he’s not.

Johnson, a Vietnam veteran who died in 2022, was a sometime college instructor and investigator in the Houston DA’s office when he was called on to impersonate a hit man when the office received a tip about a woman looking to hire a contract killer.  He proved so adept at the job that he went on to score over sixty arrests in the guise. 

Linklater and Powell seize on the premise, and embellish it to great effect.  They employ incidentals from Johnson’s life—his background in psychology and love of animals (his cats were, as here, named Id and Ego, for example). And he did use “All pie is good pie” as a catch phrase for clients to recognize him. But they take some to comic extremes, like his habit of donning modest disguises to suit the expectations of possible customers, which in their hands becomes fashioning a full-fledged parade of new personas, from a dead ringer for Christian Bale’s Patrick Bateman in one instance to a cold-blooded European super-villain and a hayseed skeet-shooter in others.  These mini-cadenzas are great for Powell. of course—he runs with each of them—but they also provide Linklater with the opportunity to present a colorful array of potential purchasers of Johnson’s services, from Mike Markoff as Craig, the first, whom Gary regales with a spectacular improvised riff about disposing of bodies that seals the deal—and the arrest and conviction—through little portraits of aggrieved husbands, wives and business partners written and played as a bunch of cheerfully weird oddballs.

But the screenplay especially expands another episode in Johnson’s career, in which he steered a client, an abused wife, into therapy rather than letting her incriminate herself, into a full-fledged romance.  It would be criminal to explain the twists and turns the script brings to this; suffice it to say they include murder, blackmail, and still more play-acting.  There’s also a good deal of moral ambiguity at work, but it’s not treated too heavily; just think of “Charade” with a soupçon of “Double Indemnity” added for good measure.

In any event, the result provides an enviable showcase for its two magnetic stars. It should prove a breakout part for Adria Arjona, who’s sexy and seductive as all get-out as Maddy Masters, the wife whose tale of woe causes Powell’s protective side to emerge.  Their banter at their first meeting has a sparkle not entirely due to the sharp dialogue; the chemistry is immediately palpable, making what follows feel inevitable despite the implausibility.  As for Powell, this represents the final leg in his recent ascent to leading man status, which began with “Top Gun: Maverick” in 2022 and was cemented in Sydney Sweeney’s surprise rom-com smash “Anyone But You” last year.  Transitioning effortlessly from his Johnson’s nerdy professor at the start to the smooth, charming hit man Ron that Maddy falls for, he demonstrates that he’s a genuine movie star.  One might call this the role of a lifetime, except that one suspects that there are plenty more in Powell’s future.

This is basically a two-hander, but Linklater’s filled the supporting parts in the clever screenplay with his customary deft touch.  Gary’s comrades on the force include Austin Amelio as Jasper, the hot-tempered undercover cop whose hit man role Johnson assumes when he’s put on probation; Retta as Claudette and Sanjay Rao as Phil, the two surveillance pros who oversee Gary’s meetings with clients and are amazed by his skill; and Gralen Bryant Banks as their put-upon sergeant.  Evan Holtzman is convincingly nasty as Maddy’s volcanic ex-husband, and Molly Bernard has an especially nice scene as Gary’s ex-wife Alisha, herself a psychologist, whose analysis of his reserved personality is both acute and, as it turns out, amusingly wrong. (Their discussion of identity allows the film’s underlying theme to be made explicit.)  Then there are the sharp cameos by the motley bunch who play Johnson’s assortment of off-the-wall clients, some of whom (like the kid, played by Jonas Lerway, who tries to pay Gary in video games) are, incredibly, based on real people. 

As is regularly the case, Linklater’s loose, limber style allows the performances to flower, and his craft team—production designer Bruce Curtis, costumer Julianna Hoffpauir, cinematographer Shane F. Kelly and a stable of makeup artists—display their A game across the board.  (It must have pained the director to move the narrative from Houston to New Orleans, presumably for tax write-off reasons; but the Louisiana setting works perfectly well.)  Editor Sandra Adair keeps things moving spiffily, and had an important hand in a delicious montage of clips from movies featuring the “real” hit men who are a cinematic staple.  Graham Reynolds’ score is another plus, as is the work of Randall Poster and Meghan Currier in supervising needle drops.

It’s easy to criticize most of Netflix’s original movies, but here they’ve got an absolute winner—a clever, inventive take-down of a sadly formulaic movie genre, marked by Linklater’s easygoing style and a combustible romantic pairing of two super-attractive stars.                  

Producer: Satoshi Takata   Director: Ryûsuke Hamaguchi    Screenplay: Ryûsuke Hamaguchi   Cast: Hitoshi Omika, Ryo Nishikawa, Ryuji Kosaka, Ayaka Shibutani, Hazuki Kikuchi, Hiroyuki Miura, Yuto Torii, Taijiro Tamura and Yoshinori Miyata   Distributor: Sideshow/Janus Films

Grade: B+

Ecological dramas are ordinarily pretty clear-cut when it comes to heroes and villains and the struggle, usually legal, to punish despoilers of the environment.  That’s not the way of Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, whose “Drive My Car” won the Oscar for Best International Feature in 2022.  He not only employs a moody, meditative style to explore the plans of a Tokyo company to build an upscale camping facility—a so-called glamping resort—in the Japanese countryside miles from the city and the reactions of local residents to the idea, but adds layers of moral ambiguity to the narrative while ending the film with an enigmatic close that’s sure to provoke and frustrate in equal measure.

The film begins with an otherworldly tracking shot with the camera looking skyward through dense tree branches as it moves along accompanied by the dreamily suspenseful droning of Eiko Ishibashi’s sinuous music, which—as repeatedly happens—abruptly cuts off to introduce Takumi (Hitoshi Omika), a local “jack of all trades” as he describes himself, chopping wood, collecting spring water for the local udon restaurant run by Minimura (Hazuki Kikuchi)—he’s aided in this task by her assistant Kazuo (Hiroyuki Miura)—and taking long walks through the forest with his young daughter Hana (Ryo Nishikawa).  Father and daughter also enjoy meals with Minimura, Kazuo, Harasawa’s mayor Suruga (Taijiro Tamura) and village gadfly Tatsu (Yuto Torii).

The tranquility of Harasawa is upset, however, by the arrival of Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka) and Mayuzumi (Ayaka Shibutani), representatives of a Tokyo company called Playmode that plans to build a glamping hotel near the town.  In a meeting with villagers, the two explain the venture, drawing objections to the proposal from Minimura, Takumi, Suruga and others.  Most present their views, which center on potential impact on the water supply, with respect, but Tatsu is obstreperous, accusing the firm of rushing things in order to secure pandemic funding from the government before the deadline date. 

As it turns out, he’s right.  In a Zoom meeting with their boss Horiguchi (Yoshinori Miyata) back in Tokyo, Takahashi and Mayuzumi are encouraged to finesse the problems with the locals, perhaps by convincing Takumi to assume caretaker duties at the resort while the other difficulties—the size and location of a septic tank, most notably—are simply swept aside.  The task doesn’t sit well with Mayuzumi, who indicates she might quit her job and move on, or with Takahashi, who becomes enamored with the notion of moving to Harasawa and embracing the rustic life, though he’s comically unsuited to it.

So far the deck appears to be stacked in the usual way.  But matters are actually more complicated.  The Tokyo bosses might be interested only in the bottom line, but their on-site representatives are genuinely concerned that the locals’ interests are being ignored.  Moreover, the villagers are drawn in shades of gray.  Takumi explains that the area was opened for farming by the government only after the war, so in reality they are relative newcomers—“outsiders”—too (in Minimura’s case, she’s been there only four years, and her business depends on the sparkling streams), and have impacted the environment already.  Meanwhile rifle fire echoing in the distance indicates that deer hunters are coming ever closer.  So the right and wrong of the dispute are murkier than it seems. 

In addition Takumi is not an entirely heroic figure.  He frequently loses track of time, leaving Hana to walk home from school through the woods alone and ignoring her even when they’re together in the evenings.  He’s reluctant to take a straightforward stand on the development, calming down Tatsu when he appears to be getting out of hand and suggesting openness to helping the Playmode team.

Hamaguchi maintains a quiet, meditative mood up to this point—some viewers will find the going annoyingly slow, with long sequences of Takumi splitting logs or filling canisters with creek water, and of him and Hana traipsing through the woods.  The habit of editors Ryusuke Hamaguchim and Azusa Yamazaki abruptly cutting off scenes, with Ishibashi’s music left hanging as well, can also be disorienting.  A moment when Takumi drives to the schoolyard to find the students in the midst of a game of red light-green light, alternately rushing forward and stopping like statues, is particularly jarring since what they’re doing is explained only after it seems the action has suddenly frozen.

But in the final reel the narrative takes a sudden turn into high-stakes drama: Hana goes missing, and the entire village—along with Takahashi and Mayuzumi—join in a desperate search to find her.  Takumi and Takahashi apparently come upon her in a tense situation, facing a deer protecting her injured fawn—the one situation, Takumi has earlier suggested, in which a doe might attack an interloper.  Or do they?  The ending is mysterious and haunting, offering no clear resolution to the central narrative about the glamping plan or a simple conclusion about the tension between the natural world and human society.

“Evil Does Not Exist” takes its time in reaching this ambiguous close, the laid-back, unhurried performances contributing to a lapidary feel, with its lush outdoor locations and effectively unadorned interiors, courtesy of production designer Masato Nunobe captured in naturalistic style by cinematographer Yoshio Kitagawa (except, of course, for the hazily dreamlike sequences at beginning and end).  It’s a film of deceptive simplicity that fascinates, puzzles and sometimes irritates, in the process inviting reflection and discussion afterward.