TMS Movie Review: Hit Man

(Netflix)

With the official release of Richard Linklater’s new flick Hit Man, I can’t help but feel a little bad for the writer-director. The feature premiered last September at the Venice Film Festival, where Linklater publicly championed the traditional theatre experience—only for his film to be bought by Netflix for distribution days later. In natural Netflix style, Hit Man was released in a handful of theaters two weeks ago before going up on their website this past weekend. Now, this is a conversation heavy character piece without any special effects or action choreography that technically doesn’t ‘need’ the big screen for full enjoyment. But a good movie is a good movie, and you can never go wrong choosing the theater if the quality is worth it. In a perfect world, fans would be able to choose between going in town or staying home for Linklater’s latest picture.

Loosely inspired by a popular 1998 article by Skip Hollandsworth for Texas Monthly, Gary Johnson (Glen Powell) is a college professor in modern day New Orleans, LA, who occasionally moonlights as a bugging expert for the police department. When their main undercover cop, Jasper (Austin Amelio), is suspended for beating up a teenage suspect, Gary is suddenly handed his assignments. Though he has no formal training, the freelancer gets a kick out of all the various costumes and backstories he comes up with for his pseudo-hitman personas which lead would-be criminals to the cops. But things take a turn when Gary decides to go off script after a woman, Madison (Adria Arjona), comes to him for help getting rid of her abusive husband, Ray (Evan Holtzman).

(Netflix)

Retta and Sanjay Rao co-star as police officer friends of Gary while Molly Bernard makes an appearance as Gary’s ex-wife. Hit Man is co-written by Linklater and Powell, who also serve as producers. Even with the story’s real-life origins, I was regularly reminded of the famous opening credits sequence of David Gordon Green’s Pineapple Express (2008) during the undercover scenes. Hit Man is being promoted as a romantic comedy, which it very much is. But it’s also a great send-up on the usual crime tropes we’re familiar with. Powell is clearly having a blast playing all the alter egos and has been proving his chops as a romantic lead lately. His chemistry with Arjona effectively sizzles for the romantic and sexy segments of the movie, where we see Gary having to tackle falling in love with Madison, who is under the impression he is one of his personas. Hit Man is tonally familiar territory for Linklater’s signature ‘hang out’ movies and feels like a good companion piece to his sleeper hit Bernie (2011), especially with its happy, yet dark, ending. It succeeds as quality easy viewing this June.