Hit Man (dir. Richard Linklater)

By: Adam Freed

Richard Linklater has found his muse.  The famed writer and director has cornered the market on discovering the comedy and beauty disguised within life’s more banal moments.  In Dazed and Confused (1994) Linklater explored the infinite possibility of teenage optimism on the final day of school.  In Before Sunrise (1995) he crafted what is debatably the most influential romantic walk and talk in history.  But it was in his lesser known ode to campus downtime Everybody Wants Some!! (2016) that Linklater first unlocked the magic of Glen Powell.  There was something shimmering in Powell’s metacognitive miscreant Finnegan, a collegiate baseball player and philosopher that winkingly gave credence to almost everything and nothing at once.  Powell’s partnership with Linklater is a match made in heaven and the Texas twosome have summoned their connective magic yet again in the Netflix dark comedy Hit Man. 

Richard Linklater tightropes a precarious tonal chasm as he co-writes the delightfully playful film with Powell and Skip Hollandsworth.  Hit Man is the story of a New Orleans based college instructor caught between two worlds.  One is the mundane life of a cat owning intellectual with a penchant for bird watching.  The more interesting half of Gary Johnson is the endless array of faux hitmen he plays for the benefit of the sting operation that he fronts for the New Orleans Police Department.  How exactly these two lives intertwined is outlined in exposition, but one is best not dwelling on minutiae with a story this devilishly fun. A script this playful and light could have very easily resorted to slapstick, yet there is a veil of darkness given room to breathe within Hit Man. Although it doesn’t at first seem in Glen Powell’s nature to drift into darkness, he is delightfully lead into the shadows by his co-star Adria Arjona (Andor, 6 Underground) who explodes off the screen as Madison, a victimized wife who unknowingly attempts to hire Gary’s hitman alter ego “Ron” to put a violent end to her marital status.  Arjona’s sultry femme fatale adjacent performance, and the canvas it allows Powell to work with ultimately makes Hit Man soar.  

Linklater’s film is steamy, sexy, and dark without ever becoming mean spirited, all products of a great script in the hands of a brilliant director.  Evidence of elite casting produces red hot chemistry between the two leads.  Unlike the forced, and generationally confused interaction between Powell and Anyone But You co-star Sydney Sweeney, the hormonal concoction between Powell and Arjona palpably provides Linklater’s comedy with the tertiary face of an erotic thriller.  It cannot be understated the level of difficulty of creating a film that operates across multiple tones all with equal success.  However, in a film about a man forced to wear many different faces, perhaps this was Linklater’s intent all along.  

Target Score: 8.5/10  Boasting a delightful and deceptively woven plot and two gravity defying performances, Richard Linklater’s Hit Man is sure to skyrocket up Netflix’s top 10 come June. The only disappointment is that a film this much fun won’t be used to lure date night audiences to theaters this summer.

Hit Man was screened May 28 at the Netflix owned Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.  The film will be released on Netflix June 7.