Hit Man (2024)

Watched 6/9/24 (Netflix)

It’s a problem that most Linklater movies aren’t affected by: being light on their feet. It’s not usually possible for this to actually be a problem because most of his movies’ plots are secondary to their characters. The films are allowed to be breezy because it’s more about hanging out, having a good time, living life. Unfortunately, the writer/director’s newest feature, Hit Man, is extremely high-concept and plot-dependent. And while the main characters are embodied by two incredibly gifted, totally watchable actors, they’re ultimately undercut by a questionable plot structure in a script that may have been better served by a very different tone and director. It’s an intermittently successful, simultaneously feel-good and feel-bad sub-two hour Netflix movie that can boast a much stronger quality than many of its trashy streaming service movie brothers and sisters, but it never quite rises above the fizzy chemistry between its leads, played by Glen Powell and Adria Arjona. It all leads to a very strange culmination that no amount of charisma or sex can overpower.

Powell stars as Gary Johnson, the almost anonymously-named philosophy professor that this true crime story is very loosely based on. A mild-mannered cat owner and lonely guy extraordinaire, Gary has all the makings of someone who could never be a hit man. But Gary moonlighting with the New Orleans Police Department as a sound technician reveals that all is not what it seems. It’s an early problem that the film never really solves that this dweeb is played by someone like Powell. They try to dress him down and let his hair flop around, but he’s still quite obviously the rugged adonis that can rifle a football down the field effortlessly under his facade. Credibility doesn’t really seem to be on the mind with this aspect of the film’s conception.

In a twist of fate, the NOPD’s hit man entrapment squad (this is real?) loses their regular fake hit man, played by a very intense, very game Austin Amelio. Amelio and Powell go back together to Everybody Wants Some!!, and their interactions really work here. Again, chemistry is not a problem in this movie! When Amelio’s Jasper is beset upon by cancel culture and suspended from the job, Gary is thrown into the mix as the new fake hit man. And he takes to it like white on rice.

Creating a variety of characters based on the clientele he is meeting to set up these “hits,” we’re treated to a string of comedy sketches that vacillate between charming and chuckle-worthy as Gary stings idiot after idiot. Perhaps if these scenes more frequently elicited belly laughs, this stretch of the plot would be more forgivable. But in the grand scheme of the movie, with how it ends in particular, these early shenanigans ring a bit hollow upon post-watch reflection. Powell is capable as the chameleonic trickster, there’s no doubt about that. But with the surprisingly sinister final act that eventually consumes this film noir in sheep’s clothing, the sheep clothes feel a bit ill-fitting at the end of the day. There’s a bit of tonal whiplash that doesn’t allow for the ultimately violent math of the film to add up satisfyingly.

After the fun and games with Powell’s Gary discovering his inner-assassin, he both perfects and blows his technique on a particularly easy on the eyes client named Madison (Arjona). After Madison spills the beans on wanting “Ron” (Gary’s persona for this sting) to off her allegedly abusive husband, Ray, Gary/Ron raises some alarms of the NOPD by convincing Madison to disengage and just run away from Ray instead. The cops get over it, a bit too quickly to avoid straining believability, but Gary then decides to begin dating Madison unbeknownst to his coworkers.

The zippy attraction between them both is palpable from the moment they meet, and the movie hums whenever they’re conversing from here on out. There’s nothing inscrutable about the almost immediate love affair that ensues. If you had trouble believing Glen Powell as the dorky philosophy teacher at the beginning of the film, you’re not alone. But as the raffish killer with a heart of gold, he’s playing a part that he was made to play. Full use of his strengths, as well as Arjona’s deft ability to sell sexy/crazy without a hiccup, float the movie for a while. Daffy, sly comedy blends nicely with the mostly well-explored relationship drama (we never really get too much about Ray’s abuse…which hurts the film a bit when Ray’s arc takes a big twist down the road). Much like the characters, you’re not really thinking about the implications of what is happening because it’s so pleasurable. While it’s undeniably fun to watch two hot young(-ish) stars engage in a steamy love affair that goes off without a single cringe, the final act unfortunately undoes a bit of that pleasure.

When we do arrive at the noose-tightening, Hitchcockian third act, there are equal parts successes and failures in the action that unfolds. The plotting, to its credit, finally becomes suspenseful. There’s a thrilling twist that kicks off an even more exciting final sting setpiece with perhaps the first welcome use of an iPhone in any movie ever. Those moments almost convince you that you’re watching a rollicking, crowd-pleasing crime caper in the vein of Get Shorty or Out of Sight mixed with the wrong-man, dramatic-irony-laden fixtures of North by Northwest or Rope.

But alas, the movie makes an extremely dark, and unfortunately very unearned decision in its penultimate scene that makes you wish the entire movie had been a slightly different animal. That decision is much more Scorsese or Fincher and that’s because they would have set up that more violent, corrosive tone from the beginning. While it’s easy to Monday Morning Quarterback a film’s creative team after you see the final product, I don’t want to hold back because there’s a different version of this directed by David Fincher that becomes a sister film to Gone Girl or Dragon Tattoo as some of Fincher’s compellingly trashy, lurid best.

Richard Linklater’s movies have both a literal and thematic airiness to them that is so perfect for things like Beyond Sunrise and Dazed & Confused. It does wonders for the romantic middle segment of this movie. But it can’t quite connect to the shocking morality play that transpires at the end of the movie. We have just watched an hour and a half of effortless, bubbly charm with soft kisses of danger but never a moment of sincere white-knuckling. While the tension builds up toward that big end decision, it’s just too little too late for a movie that spent its first 30 minutes giving us Glen Powell doing funny accents to trick very non-scary idiot criminals.

Now if someone like a Steven Soderbergh or even maybe a Ben Affleck had directed this, we know that there’s a certain noir-ish murk that they can engage with, as well as a real sense of edge-of-your-seat peril that Linklater just doesn’t have much of in his bag of tricks. Linklater is almost undoubtedly my favorite director of any of these I have named. But I think it’s hard to overstate how good the version of this would be where the first act is played serious and sweaty. Instead of the amusing dress-up games, we get treated to a series of death-defying anxiety set pieces that feature a much more frightening rogue’s gallery of clients trying to hire Gary. Gary barely skates by with his life, but gets addicted to the action, more oddly intoxicated by the feeling it all gives him. When he finally meets Adria Arjona, in that version, we really are worried that she’s a killer, mixing seduction with an ever-increasing threat level, dripping a thicker lair of pressure on the whole romance. And we could still get all of the dark comedy that comes with the Linklater version. It doesn’t change too much!

If Linklater and Powell had sold their script and Powell’s acting to a more thriller-oriented director, that ending just feels so much more earned, and we get a much more cohesive tone and visual palette preceding it. The oft-daytime summer vibes of this movie are, more often than not, warm and welcoming. But the version of this that takes place entirely in the cool nighttime air, with characters always looking over their shoulders and more guns being pulled in the dimly-lit, sickly yellow streetlights of a different creative team is the version that could have killed.

Netflix has on its hands a movie that many people are going to enjoy. I enjoyed it! Glen Powell and Adria Arjona rock, and Austin Amelio has a memorable heel turn. Plenty of scenes are punctuated by on-point comedy or electric sexuality and a few moments achieve genuine genre thrills. For a movie about a hit man, though, this Hit Man just pulls a few too many punches early on to fully justify its drastic film noir shifts late in the game. With as big of a couple leaps as it takes in those fateful last 30, it lacks the supporting complexity, grit, and substance to get you to buy what it’s ultimately selling.

6.5/10