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 Richard Linklater invents brilliant characters; specifically, he invents them for Ethan Hawke.


The Linklater/Hawke collaboration led to the unforgettable film "Boyhood," in which Hawke struggles to be a dad. He is--at first--young, stupid, and negligent. After a passage of years, he is "born again," and he attempts to repair what he can. My favorite scene in this movie shows Hawke asking his kids about their day. This question is irritating, and the kids throw it back at Hawke: "Why don't *you* narrate *your* day--if you're so eager for chit chat?"

In the "Before" trilogy, Hawke is still Hawke. He is still flawed, searching, conflicted. He leaves his wife and family on a whim; he wants to revisit an old flame. The consequences of this choice haunt him for ten years (likely more).

Hawke seems to have "aged out" of his Linklater phase, but it's a nice surprise to see that Glen Powell can do the work. In "Hitman," Powell essentially plays Ethan Hawke. Powell teaches Nietzsche to college students: "Live dangerously! Build your cities on the slope of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas!" But Powell himself fails to live by these words.

Through a strange series of events, Powell finds himself taking on a new part-time gig; he begins posing as a killer-for-hire as part of an effort to entrap men and women at the ends of their various ropes. To his own surprise, Powell discovers that he is very, very good at this work. But of course it puts him in contact with complicated people. And he becomes enmeshed in a web. Moral complications accumulate. Soon, we're wondering if Powell will escape this film with his vital organs intact.

Because Linklater doesn't worry about making his heroes fully heroic, he is free to choose some bizarre digressions and diversions as his story unfolds. The end of "Hitman" is genuinely shocking. How often does this happen with a movie script?

It's also fun to see a thoughtful script disguised as a popcorn movie. I'm not saying that "Hitman" fails to be a thriller. It is a thriller--but, really, it's a variation on a philosophical theme. It's "Boyhood" but with corpses and guns.

Worthy of the hype.
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