Hit Man is a movie with Glen Powell in it and he performed extremely well while the script was excellent. This amounts to an intense romance often missing in those sexless films produced in Hollywood. It is a character study that though directed by Richard Linklater smacks of something akin to the Coen brothers’ frenzied, grim, and twisted crime comedies. See Powell rise into superstardom, and stay for one of the most amusing and entertaining movies this year.
However, he doesn’t play a superstar; rather, what Powell does is exploit the fact that the majority of people or at least major American studios are ignorant enough not to notice that the Long-fingered Boy from Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over has become one of today’s best actors. No, it’s not Top Gun: Maverick breakout as Gary Johnson whose name sounds so ordinary you would think it’s fake. This man must be duller than anyone else alive because even Weird Al “‘s “White & Nerdy” lyrics wouldn’t include his drab hobbies and interests.” He goes on to talk about behaviors related to birdwatching or working as a part-time university psychology teacher, who has two cats named Id and Ego – or moonlights as a police wiretapper during weekends. He naturally lands himself being stuck in the sting operation against murder-for-hire plots within which he assumes the least sexy role but is responsible for making sure all equipment works properly.
Later on however when another cop acting as their usual hitman becomes unavailable owing to a suspension given for bashing teenagers; Gary is called upon. According to the movie, he is so uninteresting that nobody would care if he just vanished without a trace. And yet somehow Gary turns out to be quite good at it, instantly becoming more confident, suave and assertive. Eventually, portraying a contract killer becomes his routine job meaning that everything begins getting out of hand and he eventually begins to take pleasure in his work. Creating different fictional personas for clients’ imagined hit men, since, as he says in voiceover narration, there isn’t such a thing as hit men, Gary turns out to be a little bit too fond of the job he is doing.
We get to see him being dressed like Patrick Bateman-like while in a suit, a guy from some low-income neighborhood speaking with an unnatural accent and studded with tattoos all over, or even as a leather-clad cartoonish vampire hunter – and he fits each look perfectly. It is worth noting that Powell looks surprisingly good in makeup and costumes in every performance-within-a-performance which adds some weight to the acts even when taken into the most ridiculous context. (Also if you feel like calling bull**** on any of this: Linklater and Powell adapted Hit Man’s screenplay from a Texas Monthly article written by Skip Hollandsworth in 2001, who also collaborated with Linklater on the equally strange-than-fiction Bernie.)
Complications arise when Gary encounters Madison (Adria Arjona), a woman who intends to kill her husband. For this job, Gary becomes “Ron,” a suave, sexy, confident killer whom his cop colleagues immediately thirst over, given how different he is from Gary. And of course, they do, because he’s played by one of the most handsome men alive. Except Powell isn’t necessarily playing Gary as if he’s dumb, ugly, or even that boring – his performance relies on acting like Ron doesn’t realize how good-looking he is. And if Hollywood hasn’t realized what a star Powell is then could not Gary be painfully unaware of his own talent? It’s the kind of role you could imagine Tom Cruise playing in his early days; Gary/Ron has a bit of Cruise’s Collateral character in him, with Powell moving, gesturing, and talking like he’s the biggest deal on the planet.
Hit Man is about identity. Gary wonders whether the self is really something people agree upon for themselves and others. That being so should we expect it to be easy creating a new self just as you play another person?
That’s Gary’s blessing and curse simultaneously. His ability to become other individuals so convincingly means that his real life merges with what happens in these films: The idea of Ron becomes too tempting to give up and she can’t resist dating Madison after she divorces her spouse. Unfortunately, these two have great chemistry and once they begin dating Hit Man would be considered as one of the hottest romances ever made. This makes it look like a film designed specifically to debunk any arguments against sex scenes in movies at all. While Powell clearly leads here Arjona gives an excellent performance that matches his energy. The character Madison actually has some secrets that are shocking but also shockingly funny.
Hit Man plays into Linklater’s strength in finding funny everyday folks who are turned into very silly situations by life. Gary might remind you of Dewey Finn or Bernie Tiede, with a dash of screwball comedy adding the kind of escalating chaos that the Coen brothers used to specialize in. Visually, it is an average-looking movie, which isn’t terrible – the weight lies on the shoulders of its writer and cast.
Verdict
Hit Man combines romance and screwball comedy with a weird story about identity crisis thus becoming one of the most fun movies this year that looks at whether someone can actually change and gives us a star-making performance by Glen Powell.
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