Gary Johnson (Glen Powell) is the last person you would suspect of being a hitman.  In fact, this high school philosophy teacher is the last person you would suspect of moonlighting with the New Orleans Police Department, but Gary Johnson is a man with many surprises and does just that.  When his partner, Jasper (Austin Amelio), is suspended, Gary must move out of the surveillance van and into the field, posing as a hitman to secure evidence of the act of soliciting for murder.  One afternoon, he is assigned to meet Madison (Adria Arjona) who is looking for someone to kill her husband, Ray (Evan Holtzman), but Gary goes off script and convinces Madison not to follow through with the hit. 

Richard Linklater directs Hit Man, an adaptation of an article by Skip Hollandsworth about Gary Johnson, penned by Linklater and Powell.  Premiering at the 2023 edition of the Venice Film Festival, the 115-minute dark, romantic comedy was picked up for distribution by Netflix.   

The streamer did give the film a limited, award’s qualifying theatrical run, yet screen count and grosses went unreported.  With the state of exhibition, Hit Man feels at home on the streamer since the major studios and their massive tentpoles have made our silver screens inhospitable to the smaller, more budget-conscious titles.  Though the film fits the feel for the streaming platform, it would undoubtedly have had a stronger impact through a communal viewing experience as Linklater has a knack for highlighting the everyday struggles and teasing them out in larger-than-life, but satisfyingly believable, ways that are best experienced in the company of others and not while at home folding laundry.  That is, ultimately, how much of the audience will encounter the film, even with the growing luster of Powell in the lead, because the film is still so small in scale even if it had a wider release and longer window, it seems like unessential viewing.  It is not a puzzle box.  It is not a spectacle.  It is a meet-cute romantic comedy set in the outskirts of the criminal underbelly of NOLA. 

Despite its bristly setting, Hit Man has that same freewheeling tone present in Linklater’s oeuvre that makes his films so timeless.  From the voiceover to the shot selection, it could feel dated in less masterful hands, but Linklater presents this time-tested format as if it were a worn-thin, yet still beloved blanket. What Linklater does that is so interesting in his construction of the tone of the film is that this feels like a work ripped straight from his 90s catalog, even though cell phones and technology play a major role in the story.  He integrates this tech in a way that feels natural and still has ways to limit his characters even with the internet at their fingertips which is why this works so well.  So often, characters get off easy when there is a phone in their pocket, but Linklater most certainly set up some unspoken limitations on the devices as he and Powell were writing the script so that when they were used, it was like a hand tool made for a specific purpose and not a catch-all.  By doing this, we are never frustrated when characters do not just google something or call another character to bail them out when they are in trouble. 

When it comes to the characters, though, the film really suffers and because we do not find the cast particularly enjoyable, the humor seldom lands.  Claudette (Retta) and Phil (Sanjay Rao) are his sidekicks back in the surveillance van, and they are doing what they can in the role of supporting cast, but they were not given a robust part on the page that allows them to break through and they struggle to make it work.  With performances that seem inspired by commercials – though, thankfully, Hit Man does not feature much overt and obtuse product placement as has been creeping back into style – they do not behave naturally, both in the world of the film and the real world.  They exist as abnormalities that do not quite fit in anywhere and so their banter does little to amuse us. 

This lack of enthusiasm extends, most damningly, to Gary and Madison as well. Powell is being propped up as the next major star after his turn in Top Gun: Maverick (2022) followed by the leggy, romcom hit Anyone But You (2023), and though he is styled like Brad Pitt in his shaggy dog era, he just fades into the overwhelming beige that makes this film so easy to ignore. Part of that could be a creative choice gone too far; Gary is supposed to be a little bit of everyone and no one so he can fit into whatever the job requires, but even as the sexy and charming “Ron” – the character he crafts to meet Madison – he does not ignite that spark in audiences that we are told he does in the characters of the film. Further, Powell’s chemistry with Arjona is nonexistent. To be fair, Arjona was failed on the page with a character that sounds like there should be a lot of depth and area for growth, but ends up being underdeveloped. While her arc is long, it is just bullet points and Linklater’s style here is not one that grows and builds on what came before, but rather a parade of events, loosely connected by the sake of the characters involved subjected to only the most surface level examination of their motivational throughline. 

Hit Man is one of those stories so wild that it must be – at least partially – true. Linklater has a way of bringing these eccentric oddities and chance encounters to screen like few working today, but he really misses the mark here. It is not as funny as School of Rock (2003), as sardonic as Bernie (2011), or as swooning as his Before trilogy (1995, 2004, 2013). It is just there. On Netflix. Waiting for you to click or scroll by without any more incentive than a tile chosen by the algorithm. It is at its best early on in an extended montage as Gary meets with his “clients” to discuss the details of arranging the hits and finding out their motivations, their struggles, and their desires. It is these, for lack of a better term but it is how the film treats them, “throw-away characters” that give the most life to this film, but once Madison enters the scene for a second time, all the fun is gone and the film completely deflates despite the cast doing their best to convince us that we are having a fun time.