Review: Hit Man (2023)

Richard Linklater’s Hit Man is a classical Hollywood film in many respects. It blends various genres, most notably film noir and romantic comedy, and has a decidedly 1940s approach to entertainment that relies on star power, romantic chemistry, and a willingness to play its seemingly dark subject matter for laughs. It’s a total blast and further proof that Linklater is a talented Hollywood crowd pleaser when he strays from indie experimentation.

Starring Glen Powell—who also co-wrote the film alongside Linklater—and based on a Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth from 2001, Hit Man tells the story of a psychology and philosophy professor, Gary Johnson, who moonlights as a fake hitman for police sting operations in New Orleans. Gary puts his psych degree to good work playing the part of different hitmen, trying to match the character he plays to the potential murderer he’s setting up. But Gary is a bit too good at playacting and when he meets Maddy (Adria Arjona), a woman who wants to kill her abusive husband, he falls for her, and she falls for him. Or at least, she falls for “Ron,” the mysterious, cool hitman he’s playing.

The narrative setup is classic noir: a well-meaning, but lonely man finds himself in over his head with a femme fatale, who may or may not be telling him the truth. Powell even provides narration, which is a hallmark of film noir. But the movie also plays as a romantic, almost screwball, comedy with a light tone, obvious affection for the characters, and willingness to let the narrative convolutions fuel the comedy. It plays as if Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street became a genuine romance midway through the film rather than a sour deconstruction of post-war delusions.

Much of this tone is achieved by the film’s broad comic approach, which is increasingly rare in 2024. Rather than rely on snarky one-liners or pop culture references to provide the humour, Linklater and Powell instead have fun with costumes and performance, sending up the gullibility of ordinary people. It’s an old Hollywood gag to watch a handsome actor in silly outfits, but it works. Linklater understands this so he has the charismatic, handsome Powell dress down as the nebbish Gary and then transform into different, often ludicrous, interpretations of what a hitman is in the collective imagination. Linklater uses jump cuts to provide uproarious sight gags around Gary’s increasingly silly hitmen getups.

But the playacting is not all a joke in Hit Man. Linklater and Powell are also interested in the question of whether a person has an authentic self or is simply an amalgamation of the various parts they play for the people around them. Like classical Hollywood films or mainstream movies today, Hit Man doesn’t hide its subtext. For instance, Gary’s narration lays out the film’s themes, while his lectures to his college students elaborate on psychological notions of identity and performance.

As Gary describes in his narration, hitmen don’t really exist. There are people who kill others for money, yes, but the idea of an assassin that you can easily call up to kill a cheating spouse or business rival is not real. But people want it to be real so they act like it is. In this way, Gary’s performances as hitmen are just affirming people’s conceptions of reality.

Of course, the illusory nature of authentic identity is not just present in people’s visions of the criminal world. It’s present in their romantic lives. Are you in love with a person or your idea of that person? Is there a difference? Thus, the romantic plotting of Hit Man is as core a part of its exploration of identity as its hitman gags.

It helps that Hit Man works well as a romance though and not just a conceptual exploration of identity. The romance between Gary (as Ron) and Maddy plays in broad strokes early on, but it’s not vapid or uninteresting. Powell and Arjona have obvious chemistry and the movie delights in their playacting and charisma. We enjoy watching these beautiful people have fun with each other and tiptoe around the supposed reality of Ron’s work. As well, the early moments of their love affair operate as elaborate, sexual roleplaying and Linklater and the actors lean into the eroticism of such a setup. Not that Hit Man enters into erotic thriller territory—the sex scenes are steamy but not explicit—but it’s refreshing to see a movie delight in the sexual appeal of its stars without being alternately squeamish or smutty.

The chemistry between Powell and Arjona also invests us in the film’s later narrative developments. They’re so obviously good together that the audience becomes invested in seeing their relationship succeed, despite its being built on lies. This desire for their relationship to succeed provides the tension in the film’s later scenes as the deception grows out of control and we’re forced to wonder what, if anything, has been real about Gary and Maddy’s romance and about them as people.

The balance between the psychological character study, the romance, and the comedy is what makes Hit Man such a refreshing, old-school charmer. It’s funny, it’s sexy, and it’s keenly interested in the psychology of how we present ourselves in the present day. It finds its success in tried and true conventions. It might be a Netflix movie mostly intended for streaming, but its appeal and approach is as classical as contemporary movies get.

8 out of 10

Hit Man (2023, USA)

Directed by Richard Linklater; written by Richard Linklater and Glen Powell, based on “Hit Man” by Skip Hollandsworth; starring Glen Powell, Adria Arjona, Austin Amelio, Retta, Sanjay Rao, Evan Holtzman, Molly Bernard.

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