“HIT MAN” - REVIEW

“Who is your hit man?” That’s the question that mild-mannered professor and part-time New Orleans Police contractor Gary Johnson asks before he gets into character, as a means to coax an admission from vengeful people to effectively entrap them while preventing real murders. He can become any type of hit man they can imagine, and he’s getting scum off the streets… until his most suave personality falls head over heels in love with an exciting woman who needs her husband murdered. Now what?

This is the premise of the latest Netflix film HIT MAN, a neo-noir/screwball comedy mash-up, which is also the latest from director Richard Linklater (DAZED AND CONFUSED, SCHOOL OF ROCK), who excitingly continues to not put limits on himself or his creativity. Here, he is back in BERNIE-mode with another oddball small town crime comedy inspired by true accounts, and based on the writings of Texas Monthly journalist Skip Hollandsworth. Linklater’s true crime films (starting all the way back with his 1998 film THE NEWTON BOYS) progressively get better and better, and here he tries out a new genre (also a brilliant genre deconstruction) and makes it completely his own. This one strikes the perfect balance of everything he does really well: in addition to honoring suspenseful and steamy noir genre tropes, his film is still no less intellectually and philosophically rigorous, laid back and chill, and most importantly, loaded with folksy charm and really, really funny.

As a fake hitman, Glen Powell is the real deal, and his bid for movie stardom is well-earned. This was evident to me from the first time I saw him in Linklater’s hilarious and criminally underrated college baseball party comedy EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!! In his fourth collaboration with Linklater, Powell also co-produced and co-wrote the crackling screenplay, and while he gives himself a great showcase, he is a very generous collaborator in giving everyone else a chance to shine. As the “femme fatale,” Adria Arjona is vulnerable, sultry and goofy, but never in a shoehorned or calculated way. Her first scene with Powell (another meetup about a hit) is extremely well-written and successfully manages all of these disparate tones. You feel for her, you’re attracted to her… and then once she feels comfortable and relaxed in the company of this hit man, she absentmindedly asks him mid-conversation, “so, what do you do?”

The supporting cast is incredible as well. Here we get Retta (PARKS AND RECREATION, GOOD GIRLS) and Sanjay Rao (THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT) as a pair of funny but dogged NOPD detectives who surveil Gary’s meetups, and Austin Amelio (also from EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!!) as a dirty cop. Linklater’s usual collaborators are back as well, creating a world that feels real and movie-like in the best and most grounded ways, to allow the twists and turns of the story to feel organic.

The only real crime against HIT MAN is not a fault of the movie, but of its distribution. The feature filmgoing climate has been extraordinarily shaky even since before the pandemic, and has been particularly unkind to comedies. While I’m thankful that Netflix saw the value in picking this up and making it available worldwide through its streaming platform, I’m saddened to think that it wouldn’t fare as well in a traditional theatrical release model. Audiences have now been trained to only see “event movies” in theaters, and they forget that comedies are, in a way, event movies. When an audience is packed and laughing at a comedy, there’s nothing better. That’s when audiences truly share in something individual and special. Comedy is subjective, of course, but to laugh with others, or to hear the laughter of someone else and to figure out what they laughed at (or didn’t laugh at) and why it’s funny (or not) is a gift of increasing empathy and connection, even in a dark room full of strangers. There are some truly laugh out loud moments in HIT MAN, but even just the constant thrum of humor just feels better, and even better when shared. Sadly, I guess we’ll never know.

What we do know is that Glen Powell has another incredible film and performance to point to that shows his impressive range as a movie star and as a character actor, and theatrically speaking, we still have his event movie TWISTERS later this summer to look forward to. In the meantime, HIT MAN is on Netflix, and it is altogether thrilling, hilarious, brainy, sexy fun.

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Zach is a proud member of the Minnesota Film Critics Alliance (MNFCA). For more info about Zach, the organization, or to read other great reviews from other great Minnesota-based film critics, click here: https://mnfilmcriticalliance.wordpress.com/