Director: Richard Linklater 
Starring: Glen Powell, Adria Arjona, Austin Amelio, Retta
Certificate: 15
Run Time: 115 mins

Hit Man is a romantic black comedy by director Richard Linklater, who’s had quite the eclectic career. Linklater is one of the most versatile filmmakers around, from romace films such as the Before trilogy to comedies such as School of Rock to adult animation such as Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood to his magnum opus coming-of-age drama Boyhood. The only other director I can think of who has had such a varied career is Steven Soderbergh but one thing that unites all of Linklater’s work is that regardless of genre, the story he tells is thought-provoking. 

Linklater’s latest stars Glen Powell as Gary Johnson, a psychology and philosophy professor at the University of New Orleans. In his spare time, Johnson works undercover with the New Orleans Police Department, assisting in undercover sting operations. When a colleague is suspended, Gary is asked to step into his role. This entails him to portray fake hitmen, visiting clients to solicit murder-for-hire confessions. Gary quickly becomes very good at the role, becoming completely absorbed and thoroughly researching his clients beforehand and tailoring his appearance and personality to suit. However, things get tricky when he’s sympathetic to a client, Madison (Adria Arjona) and his job quickly becomes complicated. 

Hit Man is a strange film in Linklater’s filmography and while I admired the concept, I didn’t find it particularly funny. On the plus side are the performances – Glen Powell is terrific as the professor-cum-hitman, a layered and rather likeable protagonist. Adria Arjona is also very solid as his ultimate love interest who deftly balanced being beautiful but terrified. Although sparse, Graham Reynolds’ score is also effective. 

But I found Hit Man to overall be a little too ponderous and it wasn’t as light as its comedic intentions could have made it be or as cynical if it wanted to interrogate its preposterous concept. It’s also a good twenty minutes overlong and I found it dragged in the second half.  Some have compared Hit Man to Linklater’s Bernie, where Jack Black plays a murderous mortician but I thought both films strike completely different tones. 

While Hit Man has a thought-provoking concept and is reasonably entertaining in the moment with a terrific central performance from Glen Powell, I struggle to fully understand the lavish praise it’s received. It’s certainly not one of Linklater’s best works but there’s no denying it has an original concept.  

⭐⭐⭐ (Good)