They didn’t break the mildew once they made Glen Powell. That’s to not say the actor isn’t proficient—after first actually noticing him as a strapping baseball hunk within the filmmaker Richard Linklater’s Everyone Needs Some!!, I figured Hollywood would take fast discover of his charms. Since then, he’s vaulted to fame in films corresponding to Set It Up, Prime Gun: Maverick, and Anybody however You. However he’s a well-known form of star, the type of big-screen hottie with a twinkling smile who can slot proper into any outdated blockbuster. And Linklater makes use of that dazzling anonymity to perfection in Hit Man, a film that’s properly conscious of what a looker Powell is, however equally cognizant of his chameleonic nature.
Primarily based on a Texas Month-to-month article a few real-life police contractor, Hit Man is an ethereal comedy (written by Linklater and Powell) that hones and deploys the lead actor’s on-screen picture in methods I couldn’t imagine. Powell performs Gary Johnson, an unassuming school professor who moonlights with the New Orleans Police Division as a faux contract killer. He meets with potential shoppers, then helps the cops seize them because the shoppers prepare for him to homicide somebody. The movie and article level out that the occupation of “hit man” is mainly an invented one—this isn’t a job that anybody may be certain is actual. However America’s movie-addled concept of 1 is all that Gary needs to be.
Linklater has labored in each possible style over his lengthy profession, however whether or not he’s making futuristic sci-fi like A Scanner Darkly or a true-crime drama like Bernie, his storytelling at all times has a candy form of shagginess to it. That is true of Hit Man, notably in its first act: Gary, though pleasant and good-looking, is a fairly bland man who stumbles into his part-time police gig nearly by happenstance, after which leans into it like he’s taking an intro improv course. He buys garments, wigs, and faux mustaches and impacts humorous accents, greeting every potential shopper as a brand new prison stereotype (a biker dude, a Russian mobster, a fussy sociopath).
It is enjoyable to observe Powell slip into costume after costume, primarily a long-running joke to the viewers about his versatility. Though Hollywood has been fast to solid him because the assured romantic lead, Powell reveals Gary to be an individual who will get perverse pleasure out of pretending to be another person (and doing an excellent job of it). Linklater, too, is having enjoyable with the picture of America’s everyman, making a comedic noir the place a seemingly mild-mannered hero has a shifty streak. The work Gary’s doing can be a bit of icky: primarily tricking folks into confessing their murderous needs on tape, reasonably than catching them within the act.
Nonetheless, the folks Gary is ensnaring largely current as prison lowlifes till he runs into Maddy Masters (Adria Arjona), a lady looking for Gary’s “hit man” to deal with her abusive husband. As in any good noir, Gary instantly falls for this stunning girl, and that comfortable spot threatens to be his complete undoing, drawing him right into a tangled net of precise criminality too tasty to spoil additional. The movie’s spiral into romantic drama wouldn’t work with out Powell and Arjona’s crackling chemistry. Arjona has pulled her weight in stale supporting roles in a couple of dangerous motion films (Morbius, Pacific Rim Rebellion), however this can be a beautiful star flip. She matches Powell’s appeal and raises the stakes of what had been a extra frivolous crime comedy.
That’s what Linklater can do higher than anybody when he’s locked in, although: flip a low-key, humorous indie into one thing extra profound simply by his mastery of tone and his belief in his actors. He’s been on an odd run of late, making grownup dramas, corresponding to Final Flag Flying and The place’d You Go, Bernadette, that felt leaden of their storytelling. Hit Man is his greatest film since Everyone Needs Some!!, a testomony to the power of his partnership with Powell; it’s additionally only a attractive, enjoyable film for grown-ups that believes in its story reasonably than empty spectacle. Certainly one of Hit Man’s climactic scenes bought awed gasps out of my viewers akin to these Powell had earned for his aerial derring-do in Prime Gun; this can be a uncommon romantic comedy to see with a roaring crowd.
