Hit Man (2023)
Can a pretend hit man, enticed to be the real thing, fake his way out of it?
Glen Powell as the unassuming Gary who too successfully pretends to be a hit man
Hit Man (2023)
Streaming on Netflix
Glen Powell was seductive in his breakout role as an Air Force fighter pilot in Top Gun: Maverick (2022). His sleek, athletic handsomeness was both transfixing and reassuring. This was a guy who could only help, never hurt.
Yet there was that puzzling tight-lipped smile, with eyes shifting from half-closed to wide open. Welcoming or warning? He was great fun to watch but not entirely easy to read.
Powell complicates this impish come-on in Hit Man. He stars as an innocent character who at first seems hopelessly naive, all the while concealing that the actor will be springing his own surprises on us.
He plays Gary Johnson, a mild-mannered philosophy and psychology professor at a New Orleans college. Living alone with two cats (named Id and Superego), birdwatching, fiddling with electronics, he’s comfortably, not bitterly, divorced and serenely, rather satisfyingly bored.
In addition to his teaching job, Gary provides tech support part-time to the New Orleans PD. He rigs the sound and video equipment in an undercover sting operation run from a disguised van. His cop cohorts in the van are Claudette (Retta), leader of the operation, and Phil (Sanjay Rao), the chief sound engineer.
Their mission is to send a fake hit man to meet with an aggrieved spouse looking to have their hated husband or wife bumped off.
The fake hit man entices the angry spouse to seal the deal with a cash payment, while the incriminating conversation is picked up by the sound equipment in the van. Bingo. Uniformed cops move in and make the arrest.
One day when a decoy cop assigned to tease the illegal pact out of the mark doesn’t show up, a reluctant Gary is drafted to be the fake hit man. Using the moniker “Ron”, he turns out in his first assignment to be a superb bogus killer, “a natural”, as Claudette and Phil tell the team’s supervisor.
Not everyone agrees. Ray (Evan Holtzman), the regular decoy cop isn’t buying the sudden ascent of Gary/“Ron”, whom he denounces as a crude “amateur”. When Ray blows a job, though, the team’s supervisor gives Gary the regular assignment.
The characters are sometimes dazed and confused but we hardly ever are. Linklater can let his actors go all out – and they seize the chance with relish – because the story’s premise is so delightfully simple. You can’t con a con man. Even when he’s just discovering he is one.
His dangerous new identity as hit man “Ron” takes off, and suddenly he’s wearing outlandish wigs, adopting weird accents and outfitting himself in a business suit one day or a black leather topcoat the next. Hooked on disappearing into “Ron”, he successfully snares one culprit after another.
Then comes Madison (Adria Arjona), an abused wife. She wants her stifling husband offed. “Ron” takes a strange liking to her and urges her to hold off on her dangerous scheme. Sensing a potential, unwitting, co-conspirator, the wily Madison lures “Ron” into a steamy affair.
But can she get him to do the actual deed? When he’s not a real hit man, just plain Gary looking to add a little drama to his life.
Sexy Madison (Adria Arjona) slyly working her wiles on the unsuspecting Gary
This sort of extra marital entrapment of a duped, sexually besotted male evokes pictures like The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity or Body Heat. But underlying those noirish thrillers was the fateful question, would the scheming couple be found out?
That’s not the end in view here. What propels the movie forward is whether Gary can finally confess to Madison that he’s actually not a hit man, and whether Madison can coax him into becoming a paid killer with her luscious body as the ultimate prize.
They both overlook the jealous Ray, who, since he’s been supplanted by “Ron” as the team’s decoy, wants revenge for being pushed aside.
Partly because the storytelling here is so trim, the actors can dig into their roles without ambiguity. Gary is forced to transition from the fake “Ron” back to his real self, yet, hypnotized by Madison, he has to wonder whether there might be a killer inside him.
Powell gets to show us a nerd who gets smart and is then unexpectedly outsmarted. The plot is the opposite of twisty. We sense Gary’s unmasking long before he does.
The unpredictable element is Madison. She’s a cool seductress with the makings of a cold killer. Arjona is hypnotically sexy but also convincing as a woman poised between her husband’s menace and Gary’s hunky availability. We’re not sure what she’s capable of or how deeply her fate has become entangled with Gary’s.
The undercover crew are bemused and sharply on point witnessing Gary’s transformation. They admire him but, cops to the bone, they don’t altogether trust him. Especially Ray, who’s royally ticked off that Gary has taken the team’s top spot.
Powell co-wrote the script (based on “a somewhat true story”) with director Richard Linklater. Well shot and compulsively watchable, the movie slinks by like a rattlesnake we don’t see coiling to strike.
Until we’re bitten along with the characters. The ruse works in part because Linklater and Powell (who also produced) enlist a lively cast.
The script unspools tidily. The characters are sometimes dazed and confused but we hardly ever are. Linklater can let his actors go all out – and they seize their roles with relish – because the story’s premise is so delightfully simple. You can’t con a con man. Even when he’s just discovering he is one.
Holtzman as Ray does a fiercely funny good ol’ boy turn and cunningly makes it clear that Ray isn’t easily bamboozled, not by the Gary he dismisses as a fifth-rate would-be cop, not the crafty pretender he seems.
I confess, captivated as I was all the way through by Linklater’s tight direction and the razor-sharp performances, I couldn’t go along with the movie’s sly final twist. I don’t think it follows inevitably from all that comes before, and it left a sour taste in my mouth.
This final gambit aims to be caustic and droll at the same time, but tonally it’s not of a piece with the rest of the movie’s actually pretty tame wink-and-nod hijinks. Not all viewers will see the conclusion my way. And in any case, there to be savored by everyone is the amusing peppery Louisiana gumbo that gets us there.