Hit Man (2024, Dir. Richard Linklater):
So I was interested in this notion lately that, oh, you can change, the personality isn’t fixed. That seems current: this notion of self and identity, gender. I sort of like that it’s all on the table, that everybody’s thinking you kind of are who you say you are. To me, that’s interesting.
Richard Linklater
Richard Linklater has always been the most affable of existential filmmakers. As laid-back as his films might seem, they tackle heady subjects: Would-be (and future) lovers meeting by chance, their brief encounters over the years compressing lifetimes into hours (the Before Sunrise series), a trippy animated interrogation of what everything means (Waking Life), a single boy’s seemingly mundane youth documented as a literal 12-year odyssey (Boyhood). Like a stoned hipster happy to gab the day and night away, Linklater gets jazzed on ideas, his characters pondering what-ifs and maybes, mixing and matching banalities with profundities.
When he’s firing on all cylinders (the fin-de-siècle high school hijinks of his breakthrough classic Dazed and Confused, the sci-fi paranoia of A Scanner Darkly), the implications of Linklater’s stories sneak up on you; his direction and pacing may be shaggy yet his themes stay pin-sharp. Such is the case with Hit Man, based (very) loosely on the real-life exploits of Gary Johnson, a regular schlub who regularly posed as a hitman to help the police ensnare would-be murderers. Not since School of Rock has Linklater hit on such a crowd-pleasing subject for a movie, but while Hit Man has its expected share of smart-alecky comedy, ruminations on the nature of identity lurk just under its sunny exterior.
For its first act, Hit Man is happy to lay down the comedic beats. When the nerdy Gary (Glen Powell) isn’t assisting the police with surveillance equipment for kicks, he’s an otherwise unremarkable psychology professor, cat lover, and bird-watcher who lulls his students into a cozy half-sleep with his lectures. But when he’s drafted to impersonate an assassin for a sting operation after the usual undercover cop gets suspended, this blank of a man reveals hidden depths, turning up the volume on charisma and danger, becoming something more like… well, movie star Glen Powell. Taking his cues from how the public perceives hit men act based off movies (we get a funny rat-tat montage of famous killers from Hollywood history), Gary catches the acting bug, changing his look and affect to suit each potential “client.” This leads to far-out impersonations, including a fey androgynous Englishman, and dead-on hilarious ones, such as a stint as a nattily dressed yuppie murderer who’s a dead ringer for Christian Bale in American Psycho.
So far, so amusing, but then Linklater turns the tables on our hero when he conducts a sting on fetching Madison (Adria Arjona), who wants him to off her bastard of a husband. What begins as a logistics meeting for an assassination morphs into a first date: he’s enticed by her vulnerability, she’s smitten by his ultra-cool, ultra-competent persona. In no time at all the murder is called off (much to the chagrin of Johnson’s police buddies) and Gary and Madison are dating under the radar, their tête-à-têtes extending to the bedroom. We’re in prime Linklater territory, two wayward souls connecting by recognizing each other for who they could be—only this time with a twist. Chided by his ex-wife for being sub-par in bed, Gary can only get it on with Madison if he continues his masquerade as a world-weary, lone-wolf assassin. And Madison may be one hot, winsome abused wife, but is her “poor victim” act a put-on, what with her husband’s million-dollar life insurance policy? Or is it possible both Gary and Madison are fooling themselves as well as each other?
The secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves!
Nietzsche (quoted in Hit Man)
Without spoiling too much, it can be said that much like the identities that Gary adopts and doffs at will, Hit Man partakes of several genres, flirting with comedy, romance, drama, and finally film noir. Gary’s facility at becoming whatever the situation calls for leads to murderous twists and turns, especially when his police colleague Jasper (scuzzy Austin Amelio) gets suspicious about his relationship with Madison. In the process, Linklater opens up knotty questions about the faces we present to the world and how far one can (or should) fake it till one makes it. To his wiseass cop buddies, Gary’s new guises are far cooler and sexier than the real thing; to those would-be murderers he entraps, he’s a hypocritical charlatan who encourages people’s worst impulses; to Madison, he’s a man of mystery, a savior, or a potential patsy. Linklater gives each of these perspectives a fair hearing within the story’s shambling, episodic movement from straight comedy to moral quandary, as he invites us as an audience to tolerate and finally condone some very illicit activities.
Powell, who co-wrote the screenplay with Linklater, relishes Gary’s moral swerves; his cocky crinkle of a smile speaks of a man who might enjoy playacting just a bit too much. He’s less successful at fleshing out the existential angst behind his poses. Even as Gary’s burgeoning confidence at playacting injects joie de vivre into his everyday life (“When did our professor get hot?” one of his students whispers), he questions himself on his more squishy decisions and whether having no fixed sense of self is a good thing—but plain old baseline Gary is a barely sketched-in character, too insubstantial to deserve frequent voice-over narration about ego and id. (Linklater loves pontificating, but he’s not always that artful about it.) Fortunately, Hit Man doesn’t linger on the heavy stuff; it’s having too much fun with Powell’s star turn and his sexy repartee with Arjona. The movie takes comic flight whenever Powell finds himself in compromising situations and he slip-slides between cool Gary and nerdy Gary, the two warring for control of his psyche, particularly during a pair of climactic scenes in which lies are exposed and new ones are erected in their place. Pleasingly earthy, Arjona matches Powell stride for stride as a might-be femme fatale who could be crazier (and an even better playactor) than he is.
Brisk yet relaxed, loose yet composed, Hit Man is one of the smoother Hollywood productions you’ll see this year, merging old-time noir film mechanics with screwball comedy. As Gary and Madison cross the line and learn to like it, Hit Man re-imagines crime as an identity crisis, in which trust and betrayal are dependent on whether you believe in the face you’re wearing today, and romance can only be cemented with a body count. Those who love noir-style twists will be juiced by late developments that suggest a dark resolution is in store, but anyone who’s watched a Linklater film knows better. Hit Man’s ostensibly pat conclusion sees Gary and Madison taking a leap of faith, which you’ll find either touching or unconvincing; whether you vibe with it or not is a matter of debate, and that’s just how Linklater likes it. In keeping with his other films, even the pleasantly wry Hit Man contains dissonances custom-made for late-night arguments conducted over munchies, as its final cry of carpe diem suggests both liberation and complicity. ■
