Richard Linklater's Netflix offering is almost compulsory viewing over here as one of its stars is the daughter of Ricardo Arjona (still) officially the world's most famous Guatemalan (but, for how long..?), an actress who is also (still) Hollywood's second most famous 1/2-Guatemalan behind Oscar Isaac, and now seems to have become Aquaman's real life girlfriend.
The movie is almost great and she is almost great in it. She seems to be channeling one of those arch Latina female archetypes laid down by the likes of Salma and Sofía. One kind of knows that part of the over-acting and over-emoting we see is here called for by the role, but which part? She's helped by the fact that we've lately seen her in Andor doing non-identarian 'normal' quite successfully.
The premise, that hit men are a fictional contrivance we have all come to believe in is kind of fun. There are a number of other typically heavy ethical and existential ideas in the mix which the director handles with insouiciant levity.
We watched it on the back of a series of movies which turned out to be unexpectedly, creep up behind you, dark. Linklater adds a barely perceptible swerve into darkness at the end of this movie, one of those with one foot still planted on the light side. I have not quite made my mind up how well this ultimately works
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