New York Film Festival 2023

[Chris Knipp]

RICHARD LINKLATER: HIT MAN (2023)


GLEN POWELL IN HIT MAN

A philosophy professor moonlights as a dummy hit man for the New Orleans cops, then it gets more complicated when he gets personally involved with one of his seedy targets.

A premise so good you have only not to get in the way of it, and Linklater mostly doesn't. This movie gives off the vibe of a neo-noir, but is too mild and has too much of a feel-good, harmless ending to live up to that. Nonetheless this is a very enjoyable, loosely-slung yet exciting confection that will be giving pleasure for a long time to come.

Hit Man is all about Glen Powell, an actor some of us were quite unaware of, and besides being one of Linklater's most accomplished and entertaining pictures in years, should make this engaging, sexy actor widely known. His sizzling costar the Puerto Rican born, Mexican raised Adria Arjona is another present but hitherto unnoticed actor, and this is essential to our feeling that we're spying on a startling situation. Powell is bland, but also big and hunky. As a sometime college lecturer plus fake hit man who assumes various disguises, he's a tabula rasa who can be made dangerous and sexy, and has a potential edge to him. In short, he's ideal for this role.

The capper is that Gary Johnson is a real guy who actually did these things. It's stated in the occasional voiceovers spoken by Johnson/Powell that the hit man is a myth, though understandably, hiring somebody to kil somebody else is a crime (though one a good lawyer can get you off of in court, apparently). So that makes it odd that according to Time, there are four new hit man movies this fall: Linklater's self-titled one and David Fincher's well received pro assassin tale The Killer, both successes at Venice, plus two others, Harmony Karine's "infrared" one Aggro Dr1ft and Michael Keaton's hitman-with-dementia movie Knox Goes Away. But then--is the hit man really a total myth? Surely in the mafia it hasn't been?

The basic element here in the New Orleans-based action has nothing to do wih the mafia. It's a guy who teaches college - here philosophy and psychology, urging his charges to see their identities as constructs capable of refashioning - who first starts moonlighting doing tech work on taping and wiring for sting operations and then is drawn in to replace the police department's fake hit man when he's suspended. The linchpin of this Hollywoodization of Gary Johnson's life is that the suspended cop returns and wants his job back, but the police keep him working on backup because he's too much of a wild card ((basically an asshole). And that of course means he's a wild card also in the romance that develops between "Ron" (Gary's fake hit man name) and Madison (Adria Arjona), the hotheaded and beautiful dame who comes to him to get her repressive, horrible husband killed. She is lovely and nice, and the version of "Ron" Gary has adopted for her is simply a sexier version of his real self (he uses various disguises to suit the hit applicants). He talks her into using her hit money simply to walk away from her abusive hubby and live a new life.

She does that. But of course the abusive hubby won't just go away.

This violation of protocol on "Ron"/Gary's part signals the mutual attraction of Ron and Madison, which bears the fruit of a hot affair that geets going once "Ron" checks back to see how Madison is doing. Then there's excitement of things threatening to get messy. Gary's police department handlers aren't happy with his violation of the rules of entrapment. (By the way, despite the philosophizing about identity, which relates to Gary-Ron's use of disguises and double life, this movie never considers the ethics of luring people into committing to a crime in order to arrest them - sting operations.)

What's good, and noirish of a sort, is that there is plenty of plot here, and with that, plenty of good dialogue. There is lots of talk (including the voiceover) and very little violence, only the threat of the latter, and none onscreen. Linklater and Powell, who previously worked with him on Everybody Wants Some!! and [I]Apollo 10 1/2[/I, cowrote the script based on an article of the same name about Gary Johnson by Skip Hollandsworth in Texas Monthly. The spirits of Quentin Tarantino and the early John Dahl hover around this tasty confection.

Hit Man, 113 mins., debuted at Venice Sept. 5, 2023, also sowing at Toronto, New York, and BFI London. Screened at this review as part of the NYFF where it shows Oct. 3 and 4. Coming on Netflix, to whom it reportedly sold at Toronto for $20 million. Metacritic rating: 83%. (Later 82%.)