HIT MAN DESERVES TO BE A HIT, MAN
Leading man Glen Powell really kills it in this intelligent, sexy, witty and dark film
HIT MAN
★★★★1/2 out of 5
Cast: Glen Powell,
Adria Arjona, Retta
Director: Richard Linklater
Duration: 1 h 55 m
A blast of pure pleasure and one of the year's best films so far, Hit Man trades in devilish comic energy, off-the-charts sexual chemistry all in support of the star-making turn at its centre.
That star is Glen Powell, who's been bumping up toward better things over the past few years. He has the lead in the Twister sequel due in July, but the whip-smart Hit Man is the one that should do the trick. Wit, sex appeal and crack comic timing — Powell's got it all.
For that matter, so does his co-star Adria Arjona (Andor), but we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Based very loosely on a true story, Hit Man casts Powell as Gary Johnson, a contentedly nerdy psychology professor at the University of New Orleans who moonlights as a technical adviser for police sting operations. When Jasper (Austin Amelio), the sketchy undercover cop who usually plays the fake killer-for-hire, is suspended, Gary is drafted to take his place at the last minute; to everyone's surprise, including his own, the mild-mannered academic has a gift for posing as an ice-cold assassin. Soon he's the department's main “hit man,” changing his dress, hair and attitude for each of the low-lifes who are willing to pay to have someone removed. As Gary explains, hit men don't much exist outside of the movies, but people fantasize that they do, and his job is to become the fantasy.
A movie like this has to have a complication, and in Hit Man, the complication's name is Maddy (Arjona), a smouldering sweetie pie with an abusive husband (Evan Holtzman).
That's what she says, anyway, and maybe it's true. When she meets Gary, who's posing as a slick, affable professional killer named Ron, what starts as a business meeting turns into a date and the movie shifts into a delightful second gear, as Gary's — excuse me, Ron's — attraction to Maddy, and hers to him, starts gumming up the works and adding layers to the imposture. Everyone seems to like Ron more than Gary — even Gary. Hit Man piles one twist upon another until we're as unsure as Gary about which person he's pretending to be, and for whom. To give the movie ballast, his day job in the classroom allows for some light philosophizing, Gary throwing his students curveballs like, “What if your self is a construction, a role you've been playing since you can remember?”
Fine, but this is first and foremost an entertainment, one made by people working at the top of their game while having the time of their lives.
Hit Man isn't commercial in the strict modern Hollywood sense — there's no CGI and no chase scenes, and not a single gun is fired (onscreen, anyway). But the script, co-written by the director and the star, is the kind that flatters an audience's senses of intelligence and humour, and the central romance isn't just ridiculously hot but funny and sweet — two people sparking to each other's rhythms as they reveal themselves step by step.
The gamesmanship between Ron and Maddy ultimately leads to a blissfully funny scene where the impostures and play-acting acquire the stature of three-dimensional chess, with cellphone cues and an audience of law enforcement listening in. It's one of those sequences you play back in your head after the movie is over, just to figure out how they did it. The backcourt of Hit Man is stacked with talent, from Amelio's lanky, sleazeball of a bad cop to Retta and Sanjay Rao as Gary's deadpan associates in the sting operation, agreeing between themselves that THEY'D probably sleep with Ron if they had the chance. Everyone's so likable, it's not until the movie's over you realize you've been waltzed into a dark ethical corner.
Goosing it along is a soundtrack of New Orleans R&B, and a sublime Allen Toussaint cover of Cast Your Fate to the Wind. Appropriate title, since
Hit Man is a fable about making it up as you go along, until you realize you stopped being “you” 10 miles back.