Hit Man, the latest work from Richard Linklater, arrives just in time to serve as a perfect embodiment of two of the biggest ills currently befalling the film industry at the moment. Those ills, I hasten to add, have nothing to do with the quality of the movie itself—it is a hugely entertaining and quietly thought-provoking piece that is another real winner from one of the most consistently engaging and interesting American filmmakers working today. For one thing, it is the kind of mid-budget adult-oriented project that Hollywood has almost entirely abandoned in recent years to focus entirely on would-be blockbusters, many of which have been have been failing to live up to box-office expectations in recent months. For another, at a time when studios seem to be in the early stage of giving up on the theatrical experience—treating it essentially as part of the publicity campaign for its eventual streaming release—here is a film that, despite being as undeniably crowd-pleasing as anything I’ve seen in a while, audiences (save the lucky ones who caught it at a festival or during its barely-a-blip theatrical play a couple of weeks ago) will only get to experience at home. In other words, watching Hit Man will give you a chance to celebrate the art of cinema while mourning what the industry has become due to greed, panic and short-sightedness in regards to any movie that doesn’t instantly lend itself to the possibilities of an overpriced (and occasionally perverse) collectible popcorn bucket.
What makes the way that the film is mostly being tossed away seem even more insane and short-sighted is the fact that it features one of the biggest rising stars of late, Glen Powell, in a film that follows directly on the heels of the surprise smash Anyone But You and definitively confirms his leading man status. Here, he plays Gary Johnson, an ordinary guy working as a philosophy professor at the University of New Orleans, where he lectures to his students about the malleability of identity and how everyone needs to be willing to take the risk to mold and shape them in order to improve themselves—a conceit that seems odd coming from such a seemingly unassuming figure. In addition to his academic career, Gary also moonlights as a technical expert to the local police, assisting with the audio equipment to help bust people who are trying to hire a hit man to kill someone for them, not realizing that the guy is actually an undercover cop.
One day, the cop who usually portrays the faux assassin, Jasper (Austin Amelio), is suspended from the force for police brutality just before another sting is about to go down and Gary is pressed into service to fill in. Amazingly, he turns out to be a natural at the task, using his knowledge of the intricacies of human nature to tailor his approach for each would-be client in order to better gain their trust and get them to say the things that will lead to their arrest. He begins to rack up a truly impressive run of busts, to the point that even after Jasper is returned to duty, the decision is made to let Gary stay in the role. All is going swimmingly until the day he encounters his latest target, Madison (Adria Arjona), who wants to hire him to bump off her abusive husband. From the moment she sits down at the diner where they are having their first meeting, the sparks instantly fly between them and an instantly smitten Gary finds himself talking her out of “hiring” him, scuttling the bust entirely. Before long, however, their paths cross again and what happens from that point, I leave for you to discover. Spoiler Alert—a lot happens.
This sounds like an absurd premise for a story, though it should be noted that Gary Johnson was indeed a real person whose exploits as a professor posing as a hired killer for the police were chronicled in a 2001 article in Texas Monthly by Skip Hollandsworth (whose reporting on another strange-but-true crime story served as the basis for Linklater’s wonderful 2011 film Bernie). Considering the way that audiences have always sparked to the notion of some mysterious and usually super-cool person going around killing people in exchange for large amounts of money, I can readily envision a version of this story that readily leans into all the usual cliches of such films, this time with the extra twist in which Gary’s two lives inevitably converge upon each other. However, Linklater and Powell, who co-wrote the screenplay, have spun the material in a new and ultimately more rewarding direction by subverting audience expectations that is more intent on de-escalating the inherent tensions to fit more comfortably within his easy-going aesthetic than in ramping them up. Gary’s interactions with his prospective clients are played more for laughs than anything else—coming across as a series of brief blackout sketches that begin with him sporting a new persona to lure them into incriminating themselves and invariably end with them posing for their mugshots—but cram enough detail and observations about human behavior into them that I could imagine any one of them inspiring an entertaining and engaging film of its own. Even the sequence that is ostensibly the tensest that the film has to offer—the one in which Gary’s dual worlds do finally collide in a way that seems impossible for him to escape—turns out to be the funniest with the addition of one unexpected and ingenious ingredient to the mix. Throughout the film, Linklater playful dismantles our previously held notion of the hit man myth to such a degree that it almost seems impossible to take them seriously again. (In any number of ways, the film feels like both a companion piece and a corrective to David Fincher’s recent disappointment The Killer, a film that wished it was as subversive as this one is.)
Instead of succumbing to the cliches, Linklater is more interested in using Hit Man and its premise as a way of examining a theme that he has consistently explored throughout the course of his career—the ways in which people are ultimately responsible for changing and altering their identities and sense of self, especially in regards to how we present ourselves to the outside world, in order to become the people that they want to be. In this particular case, Linklater literally spells out that idea via the device of Gary’s classroom lectures but it is to his credit as a filmmaker that you never get the sense that he is hitting you over the head with this particular message. Instead, he deftly illustrates it through the process of watching Gary assume his wide variety of looks and behaviors in ways that ultimately prove to be beneficial to him both personally and professionally. This is a lot of fun, of course, but when you think back on what has transpired, the real theme of reckoning with one’s identity begins to emerge and you might be surprised to realize just how deep this ostensibly comedic film truly is.
This is Linklater’s third collaboration with Powell, following Everybody Wants Some, his underrated metaphorical sequel to Dazed and Confused, and the delightful animated film Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood, and he does more or less the same thing with him here that he has done in the past with Matthew McConaughey—he sees past Powell’s undeniable looks and charm and treats him more like a quirky ordinary guy than a movie idol. Granted, his leading man aura can only be tempered so much (that first classroom scene is a bit odd, to be sure) but Powell, clearly seeing this as a chance to show far more range as an actor than he did in the likes of Top Gun: Maverick or Anyone But You, proves to be more than up to the task here, taking a character that could have been ridiculously implausible and finding the reality in him, even if said character occasionally struggles with that himself. The choice of Powell as the ideal choice for the role is confirmed the moment that he and Arjona (who is just as good in a role that also has more than its share of complications) share their first scene—from that moment on, the two put on a master class in the art of screen chemistry that is so convincing that even if the rest of the film had been on the level of Anyone But You, it still would have been worth watch just for the sight of the two of them sparking off of each other.
Luckily, Hit Man is infinitely better than Anyone But You, so much so that it seems insane that most people won’t be able to enjoy it in a theatrical setting. No, it doesn’t have the kind of expensive set pieces that have come to largely define the contemporary moviegoing experience. What it does have is a lot of laughs and charm, the very things that would genuinely entertain and engage even the most jaded of audiences (there are a number of scenes here that I would have loved to have seen in a theater full of people), sending them out into the streets with goofy grins and a determination to tell others about this fantastic thing that they just saw. And yet, the charms of Hit Man are so pervasive that not even the scaled-down dimensions of the home viewing experience can tamp them down. Of course, the vagaries of the Netflix algorithm may wind up doing just that by burying it amidst all the surrounding content. Here is hoping that doesn’t happen because those who let this one get past them run the risk of missing one of the best and most entertaining films of the year.