The Powell and the Glory

There’s a point in Richard Linklater’s new movie Hit Man where the main character, played by Glen Powell, begins to don various disguises in order to cater to people who want to hire him to kill someone. Gary Johnson is a civilian helping the police bust people who want a contract killer to eliminate someone, typically a significant other or boss. Cleverly, Gary learns to adjust the character he’s playing by donning increasingly colorful wigs and fake teeth, and using accents. It’s a great comedic acting vehicle for Powell, but seems ridiculous even for a Netflix-bound movie.

HIT MAN ★★★★ (4/5 stars)
Directed by: Richard Linklater
Written by: Richard Linklater, Glen Powell
Starring: Glen Powell, Adria Arjona, Austin Amelio, Retta, Sanjay Rao
Running time: 115 mins

Here’s the thing, though: it really happened. Based at least in part on Skip Hollandsworth’s Texas Monthly article on the real Gary Johnson, Hit Man changes the location from Houston to New Orleans and adds some twists, but the wigs and the phony characters are accurate: Linklater even shows photos of real-world Johnson’s disguises when the movie’s over.

If you can get past that plot point and that Powell plays a nerdy philosophy teacher who doesn’t seem very attractive to others until he starts posing as hitmen (he suffers from Clark Kent Wearing Glasses Syndrome), Hit Man is a very good time. As he did with another Skip Hollandsworth story, the one that became the underrated Bernie, Linklater has adapted a truth-stranger-than-fiction crime story into a sly comedy. And it sees Linklater, along with co-screenwriter and star Powell, playing in Linklater’s populist fun-movie mode, which also begat School of Rock.

In the movie, Powell’s teacher character finds he has a knack for improv in playing would-be contract killers, but things go off the rails when he meets Madison (Adria Arjona), who is trying to escape an abusive marriage by rubbing out her husband. Even their first meeting crackles with chemistry and Gary convinces the woman to keep her money and run away. But she doesn’t run very far and, of course, the two end up romantically involved. An extremely steamy affair ensues, which Powell and Arjona manage to make convincingly sexy and intoxicating even as things grow complicated and dangerous.

It’s a flashy acting showcase for Powell, who primarily plays an introverted teacher blossoming into the confident Hit Man he’s portraying for Madison, but Arjona does excellent work, too, in a part that is neither femme fatale nor victim nor sidekick: she gets plenty of great lines and has enough magnetism to match Powell’s charm and looks.

If those simple pleasures weren’t enough, Hit Man smartly allows its protagonist enough room to ponder his own identity. In his lectures to his classes and in Powell’s voiceover, Gary struggles with juggling parts of his personality that were dormant before. The movie doesn’t belabor this search for truth, choosing instead to let the plot and Gary’s choices fill in those blanks. 

The movie is that rare unicorn people say we don’t make anymore: a fun, smart movie for adults that is as romantic as it is funny. Hit Man doesn’t compromise itself on its way out of corner the script twists itself toward in the third act. It has a solid supporting cast (Austin Amelio, in particular, does great work) and moves along at a nice pace. Linklater as director makes it look easy, but this mix of comedy, crime and romance is clearly not: Netflix is littered with hundreds of examples of films reaching for this kind of good time. Most don’t come close.

The film is currently enjoying a very short theatrical run on its way to Netflix. Here’s hoping audiences find it amid all the mediocre B- and C-quality originals on the platform.