3 Short Paragraphs: Hit Man

2024, d. Richard Linklater - in theatre

Hit Man had many champions coming out of last year's festival season, and many critics who were quite enamoured with the film lamented that its acquisition by Netflix would mean it would just be dumped onto the streaming service unceremoniously and be lost among the plethora of tepid Netflix Originals.  I don't know if distribution rights wound up being different between the US and elsewhere, but Hit Man has been enjoying a pretty nice ride in theatres in Canada for the past few weeks at least, and does not appear to be on Netflix's upcoming slate in this country (it dropped on the service in the US on June 7). Who knows how these things work.

That I wasted one of my three paragraphs on this preamble sort of highlights my ambivalence around the film. Glen Powell is the fastest-rising star after his mustachioed turn in Top Gun Maverick, the surprise box office success of Anyone But You, and taking the lead in this summer's Twisters, so it's only logical that his increasing notoriety be capitalized upon by putting this film in theatres. On top of co-writing the screenplay with Linklater, he gets a real showcase of his acting ability by playing a guy who puts on personas. He's an ethics professor by day, and moonlights as a fake hitman for the New Orleans Police Department. He researches and tailors his hitman role for each of his marks, which leads to Powell donning many different disguises, accents and personalities. It's fun. But he meets Adria Arjona (Andor, Good Omens) who is in a direly controlling relationship and Powell's hitman takes pity on her, especially after they seem to vibe so well together (and, you know, she's absolutely stunning).  Their weird meet cute does develop into a secret fling, but this proves complicating when certain people start to notice.

The film is a romantic comedy. I was going to say it's an update of Grosse Pointe Blank, but even that bro-friendly romantic comedy has action sequences of which there are none at all in this film. It's really a film that attempts to contemplate ethics and justice, while also being a bit silly and even more sexy.  It can't have it all and it doesn't. The surface level elements like two hot actors doing hot stuff together and the humour work quite well, the morality of deceiving one's partner, of the lengths people will go to for love or pride or whatever, or whether the ends justify the means if the person is terrible enough...well, it doesn't adequately explore these ideas. It hints that it wants to, but it doesn't really. As a result, it's a charming enough movie overall, but doesn't really leave you with much food for thought, almost as if it cut much of such deliberation out to maintain it's pithy, flirty tone.  Also, "based on a  true story", but not really.  More like wildly exaggerated from a true story.