For the past 30+ years, Richard Linklater has been one of the most adventurous filmmakers in the industry. He’s experimented with form with the Before… series and the 12-year-long filming of Boyhood. He’s used rotoscope to animate films like Waking Life, A Scanner Darkly, and Apollo 10 ½. And the Austin-based director has clung to his independent style while occasionally throwing a bone to the Hollywood studios.
His latest is Hit Man, a semi-true story about college professor Gary Johnson (Glen Powell) who moonlights as a sound tech for New Orleans police sting operations. As the old story goes, when lead officer Jasper (Austin Amelio) is sidelined, the police ask Gary to step in as a fake hit man, the point person of a scheme designed to lure in people looking to kill someone close to them.
Turns out Gary is a natural at the gig, diving into research and wearing all sorts of costumes to make sure his meetings with potential hit man hirers are completely believable. His newfound abilities work like a charm until his meeting with Madison (Adria Arjona), who wants him to kill her husband. Instead of entrapping her, he convinces her to leave her husband instead, and Gary soon finds himself seeing Madison under his hit man persona of “Ron.”
Linklater and Powell — who co-wrote the screenplay that’s loosely based on a Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth — at first seem like they’re going to go the expected route with the story, one in which every beat can be predicted. But thanks to a mixture of clever storytelling and an extremely fun performance by Powell, the film keeps you on your toes almost the entire time.
The various hit man meetings — in which Gary dons all manner of different costumes, wigs, fake teeth, and accents — are highly entertaining, even if they start to get redundant after a while. The idea of a man who’s mild-mannered in his day job transforming at will into multiple other identities is almost the perfect movie idea, giving both the character and the actor lots of room to grow and change.
Gary/Ron’s relationship with Madison brings just the right edge to the film. You know Gary is playing with fire by pursuing it, but the bond between the two of them is so palpable that you want to see them take it wherever it goes. Linklater shows a deft touch here as well, keeping the danger that their relationship poses front of mind while still showing how sexy and intoxicating it is when they get together.
If we lived in another time, Hit Man might have become a surprise summer box office success. As it stands, though, it will join the many other films in the Netflix algorithm. Here’s hoping it doesn’t get buried in the churn; the quality of this latest Linklater film deserves more than that.
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Hit Man is now playing in select theaters; it will debut on Netflix on June 7.
