The Snapshot
Within the Sundance smash Hit Man, Adria Arjona is Madison, an exquisite younger girl in a foul marriage who could or could not need her estranged husband killed. She approaches a person she thinks is an expert killer, who seems to be a mild-mannered faculty professor moonlighting for the police division as a pretend hitman (Glen Powell).
The Efficiency
For the primary half hour or so of Richard Linklater’s darkish comedy, rising film star Glen Powell charms the viewers together with his attractiveness, his humorousness and his easygoing nature. He’s enjoying Gary Johnson, a school professor who moonlights as a pretend hitman for the New Orleans Police Division. It begins innocently sufficient. He’s an electronics knowledgeable who helps with wiretaps and undercover ops when the lead detective is suspended and Gary is pressed into motion.
Powell is a pure in entrance of the digicam. We see him use disguises and pretend accents and every kind of different methods to nail individuals who wish to kill family members.
Roughly 32 minutes in, Arjona’s Madison enters and immediately modifications the vibe. She brings an edge. Hazard. Intercourse. It’s an infinite shift within the movie’s tone, however not an unwelcome one.
Arjona’s entrance additionally brings with it gravitas and drama, which, by that time, the movie wants. The pure chemistry she shares with Powell makes the movie much more pleasing, whereas additionally giving it, and the viewers, stakes.
Arjona’s Madison may simply be only a love curiosity, and in a lesser movie, that’s precisely how she could be. She actually begins that approach, however shortly turns right into a femme fatale, after which evolves additional (to say extra would play spoiler, and that’s no enjoyable).
The reality is that you simply’re by no means actually positive precisely who Madison is, the place she stands and what she’s able to till the top. Whereas the germ of that comes from good writing — the screenplay was written by Linklater and Powell — the apply comes out within the performing. Simply as Arjona singlehandedly modifications the film upon her entrance, she additionally retains the viewers — and Powell’s Gary Johnson — on our toes.
The factor about femme fatales is that they will develop into a cliché, they usually may immediately lose the viewers’s sympathy if not performed proper. Arjona avoids each pitfalls with ease. The second Madison turns into particularly harmful, the viewers continues to be one way or the other rooting for her to be extra than simply one other dangerous woman.
Quite the opposite, she’s distinctive in how alluring she stays even after we expect she may lead our hero to his doom. Arjona makes us need for her to be one thing extra. We would like issues to work out, even when it appears fully not possible.
When that type of factor occurs, you must sit up and take discover. Once more, the writing helps, however nice scripts are ruined by poor performing selections on a regular basis. Arjona’s work in Hit Man received’t give her profession the enhance that Powell’s will get (he’s after all of the star of the film). If there’s any justice, then it’s solely a matter of time earlier than she’ll get to play that lead position. When that point comes, she could have earned it.
Picture through Netflix.The Profession
There’s one thing particular about being the individual folks discuss after they say, “Oh, jeez, that film was terrible. Though, ______ was good!” You wish to be that identify filling within the clean. The one good factor that folks took away from a cinematic disappointment.
That’s what Adria Arjona took from the atrocious 2022 superhero film Morbius, through which she performed the colleague of star Jared Leto’s titular scientist who turns into a vampire and … effectively, it doesn’t actually matter. What does matter is how sturdy Arjona was in one thing of a thankless position. On the floor, she’s eye sweet in a plotless mess, however look nearer and also you’ll see that she truly brings class to the proceedings and is the neatest individual within the room.
Arjona stated in interviews that this is the reason she took the half, and it exhibits.
The 32-year-old actress has been discovering bigger roles in her decade-long profession. She confirmed up in a half dozen episodes of the second season of HBO’s True Detective, performed Dorothy within the 2017 Wizard of Oz replace Emerald Metropolis and confirmed up in loads of style fares like The Belko Experiment and Pacific Rim: Rebellion.
Arjona additionally had supporting roles within the Melissa McCarthy comedy Lifetime of the Occasion, the Ben Affleck thriller Triple Frontier, is likely one of the titular six in 6 Underground and was in 5 of the six episodes in Season One in every of Good Omens. She has since appeared within the sensational Andor and the 2022 remake of Father of the Bride, through which she performed stated bride alongside Andy Garcia. She was additionally solid as one of many leads within the Amazon collection, Legal.
In different phrases, Arjona’s clearly greater than a fairly face. She’s additionally a flexible performer with real vary who might be only one position away from changing into a bona fide star in her personal proper. One viewing of Hit Man is all you’ll must see how true that’s.
This text initially appeared on Casting Networks.
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Written by Neil Turitz