Movie Review – Hit Man
Principal Cast : Glen Powell, Adria Arjona, Austin Amelio, Retta, Sanjay Rao, Molly Bernard, Evan Holtzman.
Synopsis: A professor moonlighting as a hit man of sorts for his city police department, descends into dangerous, dubious territory when he finds himself attracted to a woman who enlists his services.
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In an era where people are declaring the absence of mid-budget films to buffer the blockbuster onslaught in many a global cineplex as the death of movies, Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, a squarely entertaining romantic-thriller-comedy deftly straddling each subgenre to near perfection, is cause to celebrate. It’s a perfect palette cleanser for the populist aftertaste of the year’s plentiful (if not always successful) tentpole films – Furiosa, Dune 2, the latest Apes bonanza, as examples – inasmuch as it it’s a perfect Sunday afternoon treat for the undiscerning, scrolling-Facebook-simultaneously viewer. Led by Glen Powell, who is having a breakout year between this, the Top Gun sequel and his runaway success with Sydney Sweeney in Anyone But You, Hit Man sees him team with rising star Adria Arjona (6 Underground, Morbius) as a mild-mannered professor subverting all expectations as he pretends to be a professional hitman to entrap unsuspecting possible killers. The fact this film’s idea is based off a true-story article written in a magazine in 2001 reminds me of the genesis of the Fast & Furious franchise under Rob Cohen, and whereas Hit Man has very little by way of cartoonish vehicular nonsense, it more than makes up for it in whimsical, absurdist farce that, when it clicks, clicks hard.
Powell plays Gary Johnson, a philosophy professor who moonlights as a hitman for the New Orleans Police Department, going undercover to catch individuals who hire him to commit murders. Through this role Gary navigates the complex world of crime and justice with his unique perspective and dry (dull) wit. On one assignment, posing as the hired killer “Ron”, Gary meets abused housewife Madison (Arjona), who wants “Ron” to kill her husband Ray (Evan Holtzman), although initially he talks her out of it. Things become more dangerous, however, as Gary begins an illicit affair with Madison that threatens to blur his personas and the line between his real identity and his fake one. Matters aren’t helped when a rapacious fellow cop, Jasper (Austin Amelio – Fear The Walking Dead), begins to sniff out the truth.
One part romantic-comedy, another part sexy thriller, Hit Man taps adult fun in multiple ways thanks to the larger than life performance of Glen Powell and an absurd, yet weirdly believable, plot. Admittedly the crucial central character change plot beat feels roughly hewn and shoehorned into position by some clumsy exposition, and in reality makes not a lick of sense in the overall scheme of things, but Powell and Arjona make a sizzling on-screen couple in what amounts to a soufflé of a film, a light and fluffy piece of forgettable yet entertaining filmmaking. Hit Man is an all-job venture from Richard Linklater, who – when he’s not taking nearly two decades to film Boyhood, or dabbling with Jack Black comedy in School of Rock – is best known for the Before Trilogy (Sunrise, Sunset, Midnight) and while the action-comedy subgenre might not be directly in his wheelhouse, he acquits himself admirably here. He infuses the screenplay with genuine wit, pathos and a very specific emotional weight, and while the idea of a man pretending to be an assassin for hire hoodwinking possible murder-hirers might seem a little dark there’s plenty of archetypal comedy to mine here.
Powell plays wide and loose with his characters’ various disguises, from businessman accountant style assassin to yell0w-toothed yokel assassin and everything in between. Of course, it’s the “top gun jock” assassin archetype that catches the eye of Adria Arjona’s Madison, a suave and super-cool masculine paradox emblematic of every woman’s fantasy where in real life, Gary Johnson is a university lecturer moonlighting for the police. It’s a bizarre set of circumstances for a plot but Linklater breezily skips past a lot of the logic chasms and throws fun, footloose comedic gold at the screen as Powell ingratiates and captivates the litany of suspects he encounters with panache. The film is intended as a fairly slick “will he or won’t he” be discovered by Madison for who he truly is, and this dichotomy of a plain, bespectacled professor pretending with his whole chest to be an assassin is too sweetly crafted to fail. For her part, Adria Arjona is sexy as hell and more than a match for Powell’s chisel-jawed good looks, both of them engaging in plenty of PG-13 bedroom romps before Gary’s secret starts to unravel. The third wheel in all this is Austin Amielo’s terrific turn as Jasper, the nonchalant and often crass undercover cop Gary replaces early in the film; Jasper is the perfect foil for Powell’s Gary, being all unkempt and henchman-like in appearance (a far more visually cliched look for an assassin role) and when the jigsaw starts to come together the film takes a darker turn than I was expecting with him.
Netflix-branded films usually have a stench of mediocrity about them, but Hit Man – notable as a film Netflix acquired after it was completed, therefore not affecting the quality – bucks the trend with competency and a really engaging premise. The script is fun, the cast give it an appropriate level of wink-wink, and Linklater brushes aside reason and sense in the name of sheer entertainment; I imagine this film would have worked great with an old-school Hollywood star like Cary Grant, or maybe even Astaire/Rogers dance-number or two, its played with such endearing romantic fantasy. Okay, you won’t remember it much beyond your initial viewing, and you’ll probably easily recommend it to friends to check out as a film on Netflix actually worth watching, but thanks to Powell’s commitment to the bit and Arjona’s sultry turn as Madison (and a funny supporting cast of varied hillbillies and hicks) it’s a really great way to pass an hour or so on a Sunday afternoon. It’s an undemanding plot told by a filmmaker working from the back pocket, with a white-hot cast and an enthusiastic production value: Hit Man is well worth checking out.
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