‘Hit Man’ Review: Glen Powell Cements His Status As A Movie Star In Steamy Hitman Rom-Com [TIFF]
Glen Powell in Hit Man. Courtesy of TIFF.
The best thing to come out of Hit Man (among other things) is that a director has finally utilized Glen Powell to his greatest potential. Thank you, Richard Linklater. The film finds Powell as Gary Johnson, a philosophy teacher and volunteer police officer who’s generally relegated to being the “tech guy” for sting operations. Gary is the type of non-threatening, cat-loving, bird-knowing, uninteresting teacher we all have had and feel pretty indifferent about. Though he’s boring on the exterior, Gary’s position moonlighting as a cop brings some excitement to his life, especially after he’s brought into the field as a faux hitman. The shocking thing here is that he’s actually quite good at it, becoming the go-to fake hired gun for these operations, probably because he lives in a world that doesn’t realize that he’s literally Glen Powell, and can do anything.
After a number of successful operations — and taking on different characters for each one — Gary, now “Ron,” has a meeting with Madison (Adria Arjona), a woman trapped in her marriage who wants to hire him to “take out” her husband. Being the good guy that he is, “Ron” talks her out of this, only to later start a relationship with her, still posing as the cool, calm, and collected persona Gary invented to get her to like him. For the majority of the second act, Linklater uses their budding relationship as enough of a story to keep the audience interested, finally kicking things into gear when Madison’s ex*-husband (Evan Holtzman) attempts to hire Gary to kill — you guessed it — Madison.
Adria Arjona & Glen Powell in Hit Man. Courtesy of TIFF.
Though Glen Powell only ascended to Hollywood’s A-list after last year’s Top Gun: Maverick, Richard Linklater has recognized his star power since all the way back in 2006 when he cast an 18-year-old Powell in Fast Food Nation, with Hit Man being the fourth collaboration between the two. The screenplay, which Powell co-wrote with Linklater, is inspired by a Texas Monthly article about the real-life Gary Johnson, who did moonlight as a fake hitman and did dress up as a different character for every meeting, but that’s where the similarities stop. Linklater and Powell craft a sharp script out of the story’s basic premise, carefully walking the line(s) of drama, comedy, and sexy thriller. None of the absurdist moments feel out of place, and the climax is sure to impress (it’s earned mid-screening applause during all of its festival screenings in Venice and Toronto) not just because of the impeccable writing but also because of how well Powell and Arjona perform the scene.
Speaking of the film’s leads, Glen Powell and Adria Arjona are both fantastic and have great chemistry with each other, a definite plus for a film of this nature. Powell, tasked with a more challenging role, somehow makes every persona he steps into feel natural or faux-natural, if that’s what the film calls for. He has to walk a fine line to make his character come off as likable, and he just nails it the entire time. Though Powell’s performance is one that cements his movie star status, Adria Arjona is a clear standout any time she’s on screen, giving a knockout performance that’s sure to allow her to step into the spotlight more often.
Adria Arjona & Glen Powell in Hit Man. Courtesy of TIFF.
The film uses themes of identity — literal and theoretical — well overtly and through subtext, using Gary’s job as a philosophy teacher to create an interesting question that asks about oneself and if we’re fixed beings, incapable of change. It explores this through what becomes Gary’s split personality — the true Gary, who people seemingly rarely take seriously, and the cool, calm, collected, “hot” Ron, who becomes the person that everyone wants to hang out with. “Do you know yourself?” Gary asks his students in the film’s introduction. It becomes clearer as the story progresses that Gary knows himself less than he thinks, looking at his identity through some sort of X-ray lens that allows him to get under his skin, to examine who he is at his core, and how far he’s willing to go for a relationship, and what lines he’s willing to cross in general.
Grounding a lustful, sexy rom-com under the guise of being a noir-esque hitman movie is a stroke of genius, and it serves as the base for what is undoubtedly Richard Linklater’s best movie in years. It’s easy to get wrapped up in this story and find yourself invested in these characters’ lives, given the stakes, but it’s even easier when there’s a layer of playful relatability buried underneath the steamy exterior.
Dear distributors: For the love of god, someone acquire this and give it a solid campaign for Best Adapted Screenplay. Please.
