TIFF 2023 Film Review: Hit Man
SEXY, FUNNY CINEMA IS BACK WITH RICHARD LINKLATER’S DELIGHTFUL HIT MAN
Richard Linklater’s confectionary romcom tears the house down at the Toronto International Film Festival this year. Paradoxically breezy yet unpredictable, Hit Man is a full-blooded rejuvenation of its genre, buoyed by crackling chemistry and capital “M” movie star performances from Glen Powell and Adria Arjona. A movie about self-actualization and the moral chasms we pave over, it’s sexy, funny, and just a little twisted. Minor spoilers ahead…
“What if your self is a construction, an act or illusion? A role you’ve been playing since the day you were born?” That’s the question asked by Gary Johnson (Glen Powell), a nebbish thirty-something philosophy professor. Sporting wireframe glasses, a geek combover, and shapeless polos two sizes too large, he’s a facsimile of a real guy: the real Gary Johnson - also a professor - sidelined for the New Orleans Police Department masquerading as an assassin, conducting sting operations to incriminate would-be murderers lacking the stomach to do the job themselves. Hit Man, Richard Linklater’s Hollywood-ized version of Johnson’s story, adds the veneer of an old-school romcom, spinning stranger-than-fiction truth into a dynamite crowdpleaser laden with hidden barbs.
You would never think a Civic-driving, birdwatching cipher such as Powell’s Gary Johnson would ever be a fake killer-for-hire, but when his scuzzy, more streetwise colleague (Austin Amelio) is suspended, it falls to Gary to don the costumes and demeanors required to do the job. His police compatriots remind him of the rules, but Gary retorts: “Hitmen aren’t real.” After all, who in their right mind would risk capital punishment to snuff out a life for a complete stranger?
Trotting out a reel of cinema’s most famous assassins, Hit Man emphasizes the myth of the contract killer: they mostly live in the pop aether of our imaginations. But as it turns out? Gary’s trope wariness is a perfect fit for his new role - he’s a natural. Meticulously crafting his disguises to suit his unsuspecting marks, Gary’s wild personas run the gamut from Patrick Bateman pastiches to leather-clad Russians to androgynous Tilda Swinton types. It’s hilarious stuff, but the real magic lies within Glen Powell’s tightrope, capital “M” movie star performance: there’s never a single moment where at least some of the real Gary doesn’t peek through.
“A movie about self-actualization and the moral chasms we pave over, it’s sexy, funny, and just a little twisted.”
Gary’s balancing act with his alter egos becomes even more precarious with “Ron,” a disguise concocted for beleaguered housewife Madison (an instantly endearing, goofy Adria Arjona). Desperate to rid herself of her abusive husband out of self-preservation rather than greed or malice, Madison hires and almost immediately falls for “Ron,” who is less one of Gary’s usual characters and more an “elevated” performance of self: open-shirted, charismatic, and just the right amount of dangerous. Their whirlwind courtship is, of course, a breezy farce. With the lines blurring, Gary begins to believe the reality of his “murderer with a heart of gold” character he knows exists only in movies. In his philosophy class, he lectures his students: “If the universe is not fixed, then neither are you.”
In a landscape where movies try too hard to be funny and are too afraid to be sexy, Hit Man is refreshingly - and effortlessly - both. Carried by an entertaining popcorn script co-written by Glen Powell himself, the film is remarkably adept at toggling romance, suspense, and comedy, running on the red-hot chemistry between its two searing leads. It barely has to try to unearth some superstar performances: Powell taps into an easy, malleable charisma long dormant from his other American contemporaries, and Arjona finds the perfect balance between volcanic and silly while still retaining the agency of her own desire. It all builds to a blistering crescendo of a third-act setpiece: a bravura whirlwind of stagecraft, direction, and roleplaying prowess as layers upon layers of deception come crashing down.
Hit Man is such a confident Linklater affair that its hidden venom flows surreptitiously from a crowd-pleasing denouement. Before you know it, a pleasant, breezy footchase for self-actualization finds a noir-tinged morbidity: it then becomes a movie about all the ways we can pave over our moral chasms. Broaching knottier-than-expected questions of identity, it might be surprising, but it isn’t a swerve; Hitman - despite its lighter trappings - sticks to the ribs.
