Review: Richard Linklater's Hit Man Hits the Spot

In his novel Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut famously wrote, "We are who we pretend to be, so we must be careful who we pretend to be." The line is delivered by Howard Campbell, an American spy in Nazi Germany who is so good at playing a Nazi that he basically becomes one. Hit Man, the new fact-based comedy-noir from Boyhood director Richard Linklater, tells a similar cautionary tale about the dangers of mixing personas. It stars Glen Powell in a star-making turn, not as a real hitman, but as a guy who pretends to be one in order to catch the people who might hire him.

Powell plays Gary Johnson, a mild-mannered college philosophy and psychology professor with Clark Kent-like glasses and two cats. He teaches by day and moonlights as a comms technician for the New Orleans Police Department, helping ensnare people looking to hire a contract killer. One day, Gary takes the place of a fellow cop in a sting. He wears a wire, puts on his best impression of an actual killer, and gets the client to verbally admit that they're looking to put out a hit.

Gary soon throws himself playing a succession of hitmen, researching every perp and inventing the best disguises and accents to fool each one. Sometimes he dresses as a gun-toting redneck, other times a creepy Russian in a leather jacket. Murder for hire is treated as a kind of fantasy, something that really only exists in movies that the suspects nevertheless believe. "My job was not to debunk the fantasy," he says in narration, "but to become the fantasy." Doing the stings is his way of investigating the "eternal mystery of human consciousness and behavior" and how someone could be driven to seek the death of another. That urge to kill also helps him justify his actions: He and the police aren't entrapping or coercing these would-be murderers by proxy, for in his eyes, they sealed their fate the moment they contacted him.

Linklater, proudly based in Austin, Texas, rather than Hollywood, is known for his range as a director. He's made philosophical dramas like Boyhood and the Before trilogy, rotoscoped animations like A Scanner Darkly, and commercial films like School of Rock. He's also taken to unconventional true crime tales, such as 1998's bank robber thriller The Newton Boys and 2011's Bernie. Linklater wrote the latter film, the true story of a saintly small-town funeral director who murders a much-hated dowager, with Texas Monthly journalist Skip Hollandsworth, who also wrote the story on which it was based.

Hollandsworth also wrote the source material for Hit Man, another Texas Monthly feature from 2001 about the real Gary Johnson, who helped make more than 70 arrests for the Houston PD and died in 2022. But this time, Linklater co-wrote the screenplay with Powell, who he previously cast in 2016's Everybody Wants Some!!. Powell, a protegée of Denzel Washington, spent years as a Hollywood bit player, picking up minor parts in everything from Spy Kids 3D: Game Over to Hidden Figures. His star has risen dramatically in the past two years after a supporting role in Top Gun: Maverick in 2022 and starring aside Sidney Sweeney in the rom-com Anyone But You late last year. Powell and Linklater have refashioned Hollandsworth's story as a star vehicle for the former, a sophisticated yet entertaining film that lets the utterly charming actor strut his stuff. As such, Linklater's direction pairs a breezy, contemporary Hollywood style and tone with flourishes inspired by Hitchcock, classic noir, and '90s erotic thrillers, which become more pronounced as the film goes on.
Things get complicated, as they often do in noir, with the arrival of a beautiful woman in trouble. Gary meets with Madison (Adria Arjona) at a diner. His persona, "Ron," is everything he's not — suave, confident, courageous. From the beginning, it's clear she's different from the others. Her walk to the table is shot out-of-focus, like Grace Kelly's entrance in Rear Window. The two have chemistry, flirting as if they're on a first date, but business proceeds. She fears her husband, who doesn't let her work and keeps her trapped at home. She's scared and desperate, not malicious. "Ron" takes pity on her. He refuses to take her envelope of cash: "Take what's in there and don't go home."

"Ron" continues to see Madison after their first encounter, and they fall into a kind of situationship, more than lovers but not quite a couple. The actors' chemistry gives their scenes a smoldering intensity, and Arjona (the daughter of Latin music icon Ricardo Arjona) especially exudes a femme fatale energy. Their trysts are intercut with Gary's lectures on the Freudian psyche, casting the carnal hitman as id and the professor-investigator as ego. Gary relishes his new persona's fearlessness, enjoying how "he wasn't a thinker, he was a doer." Madison also enjoys her newfound freedom — dating a professional killer excites her. The excitement doesn't last — two dangerous figures from the recent past re-enter the picture, and Gary must jump between his two personalities to get himself and Madison out of trouble, culminating in a highwire third act with some smart, impressive twists. In the film's final moments, he learns that sometimes, we do indeed become what we pretend to be. 

With its fascination with split personalities and alter egos, Hit Man, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival last year, manages to imbue its true crime premise with intelligence and excitement. It's potentially also a true coming-out for Powell as a Hollywood leading man with a bonus star-making turn for Arjona, yet this may be undercut by the possible misfortune of the film getting picked up by Netflix. Rather than give it a proper theatrical release, the streamer dumped the movie in a laughably minuscule number of theaters last Friday. In Miami, for instance, the film is playing in a single theater, the Regal South Beach, until Thursday, May 30 — after which it will be thrown on the platform on June 7. Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos has continued to stubbornly defend his platform's streaming-first model, even declaring recently that Barbie and Oppenheimer would have been successful had they debuted on the service. Maybe they would have, but they wouldn't have made billions of dollars at the box office. Even theatrical flops, like this year's Argylle, tend to perform better on streaming once they've gone through theaters, while films that go straight to streaming disappear quickly from the cultural conversation. I sincerely hope that doesn't happen to Hit Man. It would be a shame for this fine film and its excellent cast and creators not to receive the acclaim they deserve.

Hit Man. Starring Glen Powell, Adria Arjona, Austin Amelio, and Retta. Directed by Richard Linklater. Written by Richard Linklater, Glen Powell, and Skip Hollandsworth. 115 minutes. Rated R. Check for showtimes at miaminewtimes.com/miami/movietimes.