By Seth Lukas Hynes
Hit Man
Starring Glen Powell and Adria Arjona
Rated MA15+
4.5/5
Hit Man is a scintillating, brilliantly-written crime comedy by Richard Linklater.
Gary Johnson (Glen Powell, who also co-wrote the film with Linklater), a college professor and police technician, becomes an undercover fake hitman entrapping his clients.
Posing as the hitman Ron, Gary falls for his new client Madison Masters (Adria Arjona).
Linklater is one of the best actor’s directors working today, and Hit Man is full of engaging performances and rich, literary yet natural dialogue.
Powell is a chameleon as Gary, taking on markedly different personae for each sting operation, and through his electric chemistry with Madison, it’s fun to see the mild-mannered Gary become more like his rugged alter-ego Ron.
The well-paced plot feels easygoing yet suspenseful, with several layers of intrigue and an invigorating sense of fact and fiction blurring, as a real murder scheme intertwines with Gary/Ron’s police acting and romantic fantasy.
Hit Man is loosely based on a 2001 Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth about the real Gary Johnson, who took on various false identities to aid in the arrest of over seventy people seeking to hire contract killers.
Hit Man is Linklater’s second collaboration with Hollandsworth, with their first being the 2011 true story crime comedy Bernie.
For a more action-focused assassin-themed comedy, watch The Killer by David Fincher (which was my seventh-best film of 2023), but Hit Man is a clever, witty, sexy comedy available for streaming on Netflix.
