Summary
-
Hit Man
stars Glen Powell as the eccentric Gary Johnson, a real-life person who posed as a killer-for-hire to help the police catch potential criminals. - Richard Linklater and Glen Powell’s script is cleverly constructed, even if the dialogue can be pretty embarrassing and unrealistic, and the film relies on some weak tropes (especially in the beginning).
- Despite
Hit Man
being genuinely ridiculous and its characters being arguably psychotic, it’s very fun, unpredictable, and delves into complicated themes of identity, fantasy, and the nature of self.
Richard Linklater continues his work with Netflix on Hit Man, an extremely more accessible movie than his last film, Apollo 10½. It’s so seemingly mainstream, in fact, that it stars Glen Powell, the handsome young actor du jour, whose work opposite Sydney Sweeney in Anyone but You and Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick has quickly made him a star. Before those movies, Powell starred in three films by his fellow Texan, Richard Linklater — Fast Food Nation (2006), Everybody Wants Some!! (2016), and the aforementioned Apollo 10½ (2022). Now, he’s co-writing and co-producing with Linklater in Hit Man, which gives him the kind of role that actors dream about.
That’s because Powell plays Gary Johnson (not the Libertarian politician, thankfully), who was an infamously chameleonic eccentric who helped the Houston Police Department arrest more than 70 people. Johnson was a staff investigator for the Harris County district attorney’s office, and would go undercover as a hit man-for-hire, attracting (or entrapping) people who would pay thousands of dollars to have him murder family members, spouses, rivals, or anyone else. Once he received the money and recorded them stating their intentions, the police would come in.
Johnson didn’t just show up as himself to all of these busts, preferring disguises and different personas. As such, Hit Man allows Powell to play around and become multiple different people, which works as more than just an acting exercise. This is a film about identity, the concept of self, the appeal of fantasy and violence, and the performative nature of relationships. It could’ve been heady stuff, and it occasionally dips its toes into Philosophy 101 (this is the director of Waking Life, after all), but Hit Man is ultimately a colorful, goofy, and sexy comedy with some clever twists. It’s also awkward and downright psychotic.
Stick with Hit Man Despite Its Lame Beginning
3.5/5
From director Richard Linklater comes Hit Man, a 2023 action comedy film based on a Texas Monthly article of the same name. Undercover and trying to catch a group of criminals, a Houston police officer poses as a hitman until he falls for a woman on assignment. Finding himself diving deeper into the world of crime, the Houston officer finds it increasingly difficult to escape his new undercover persona.
Release Date September 5, 2023
Runtime 1hr 53min
Pros
- Glen Powell may be too handsome for the role but he’s still excellent, and Adria Arjona gives her best performance yet.
- The script is surprising and unpredictable, with some clever thrills.
- Hit Man has a lot to say, and is pretty sexy along the way (even if it’s almost psychotic).
Cons
- Hit Man suffers from some eye-rolling cliches and cringe dialogue, especially its awful opening.
- The actual Gary Johnson seems more interesting, and Hit Man feels very unrealistic and sometimes just insane.
Hit Man begins in a rather groan-inducing manner, using tropes we’ve seen way too many times. We open with professor Gary Johnson quoting Friedrich Nietzsche in front of a chalkboard, asking his young class questions about selfhood (the movie’s theme). He does a carpe diem and tells the class about the value of living with excitement, and one student gives basic exposition by making fun of him for driving an old Honda Civic. Cue poppy, upbeat music and a voiceover from Gary:
“I know, on the surface, my life looks a little plain. A guy feeding birds and living alone with his cats in the suburbs. But I liked my inner life. I was pretty happy, at least content. Oh, by the way, my name is Gary Johnson…”
This immediately spells disaster, and it’s incredible that Hit Man (and Powell’s performance) comes back from such a genuinely lame and cookie-cutter opening. That’s largely because it moves along at a pretty rapid pace, and before long, Gary is thrust into action by the D.A.’s clandestine team.
Related 10 Reasons Why Everybody Wants Some!! Is Richard Linklater’s Most Underrated Movie Everybody Wants Some!! deserved a much bigger audience than what it got when it was released. Here are 10 reasons why you should watch the movie.
Glen Powell Is a Movie Star, Not Gary Johnson
While the real Johnson worked as an actual staff investigator, Linklater’s version seems way too out of his element for this job. Powell’s character is a teacher who began part-time work as some kind of electronics assistant to the Houston police, then was helping with surveillance and recording equipment in a van.
As the office’s main undercover talent, Jasper (an excellent Austin Amelio), has been suspended for 120 days, they need someone else to act the part and get (or entrap) someone to pay for and describe a murder. With his jorts, big glasses, and tucked-in waves of hair (almost like Richard Linklater himself), it feels ridiculous that the office would send Gary in to impersonate a hit man with little time or planning, much less actual training as an undercover police officer in dangerous situations. And it feels equally unrealistic that Gary would panic but then be immediately perfect for the job.
Related Glen Powell’s 10 Best Movies, Ranked by Rotten Tomatoes Glen Powell’s career has been consistently growing to fame. Here are his best films, ranked by Rotten Tomatoes.
The real Gary Johnson seems very different from Powell, and more interesting. There’s no mention of his deep appreciation for Buddhism in Hit Man, and the way they link the pacifistic Johnson with violence would’ve arguably been offensive to the man (who passed in 2022). And, while Powell is legitimately great here, he’s honestly too handsome to be taken seriously; he’s just not someone who eats TV dinners alone with his cats, Ego and Id, and rambles about bird-watching. He’s a movie star. But the more you watch Hit Man, the more Powell’s performance and the labyrinthine script captures your attention and suspends your disbelief.
Related: The Real Story Behind Richard Linklater’s Hit Man
An Anti-Hit Man Movie Becomes a Bonkers Rom-Com
If you haven’t figured it out yet, Hit Man is not a movie about actual hitmen and assassins; the way it even mocks the notion of them and explains them as cinematic fantasy makes this practically an anti-hit man movie. But that doesn’t mean it’s without thrills. During Gary’s successful series of assisted arrests, he is sent to draw out a confession from (or entrap) a beautiful young woman who seems genuinely afraid of her husband and may be in an abusive relationship, either emotionally or also physically.
This is Madison, played by the excellent Adria Arjona, who has managed to give great performances with a lot of weak material, but she’s been highly memorable in some good things (Irma Vep, especially). She has great sex appeal here, and her chemistry with Powell puts the sex comedy Anyone but You to shame. Gary feels bad for Madison and doesn’t want to see her arrested; he blows the operation and encourages her to spend her money on escaping her marriage (which is often and unfortunately not as simple as depicted in Hit Man).
Related Top Gun: Maverick’s Glen Powell to Lead Remake of Warren Beatty Classic The original 1978 film starred Warren Beatty and was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
The Sexy Chemistry of Psychos
Madison and Gary’s initial meeting plays like a cheesy rom-com with two quirky oddballs, though it’s supposed to be an abused woman desperately trying to pay a stranger to murder her husband. It’s all very bizarre and kind of cringe, like most of their teasing, flirtatious dialogue in Hit Man. This is far from Linklater’s Before trilogy. However, Powell and Arjona do their best at selling the dialogue, even if more silence would’ve made the film even sexier. Madison reaches out to Gary, and they begin an erotic relationship based on lies — she thinks he’s a hired killer, and he keeps pretending to be.
Madison and Gary’s relationship says a lot about them. It would normally be a dating dealbreaker when you find out a woman tried to have her abusive husband killed, and is now horny for a professional murderer. Another dealbreaker — when a man chooses the fake persona of a hired killer over his actual personality, worried that he won’t be as appealing if he wasn’t a violent murderer. When you strip back the sexy rom-com vibe from Hit Man, it reveals itself as a film about two complete psychos. You’ll have to watch the film to see if Linklater takes this seriously or not.
Related 17 Coolest Movies with Hitmen and Assassins, Ranked There is something slick and intriguing about the ethically ambivalent hitman, which makes assassins utterly magnetic in the history of movies.
Richard Linklater Always Makes You Think
Yes, Hit Man is bonkers. It plays out like a fun rom-com in bright and vibrant hues, but its characters are disturbing to say the least. They slowly reveal more of themselves as Linklater tightens the narrative and traps its characters in seemingly impossible situations. He and Powell create a very clever Rube Goldberg machine of a script, even if pockets of cringe and lunacy exist throughout. Hit Man is one of many movies that are entertaining and great enough in some ways to overlook how terribly weak they are in other ways.
As awkward or ridiculous as it may be, Hit Man nonetheless lands several of its proposed themes, even if it sometimes does so with a complete lack of subtlety. It asks the age-old question: is the nature of ‘selfhood’ malleable, and can we change? If we act like someone we want to be, are we them? How much do we adjust ourselves based on how we think others perceive us (or want to perceive us)? When does fantasy become healthy, and when is it destructive? And of course, all of these things apply to the art and profession of acting, which is undoubtedly why Powell was interested in the story.
While maintaining its wacky, fun tone, Hit Man interrogates all these things with enough strength to make you think. This is doubly true for its meditation on the appeal of violence; why are we attracted to the fantasy of it when we denounce the engagement with it? You might find yourself considering many of these themes in your own relationship. Hopefully, it’s not as psychotic as Gary and Madison’s.
Hit Man is a production of AGC Studios, ShivHans Pictures, Monarch Media, Barnstorm Productions, and Aggregate Films. It’s released in limited theaters on March 24, 2024, and you can find showtimes and tickets here. Hit Man will stream on Netflix starting June 7. You can watch it through the link below when it does:
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