Richard Linklater could be cited as one of those world-class directors who alternates idiosyncratic, arty films with mass-marketable, crowd-pleasing entertainments, and most people will probably slot Hit Man in the latter category, but it’s deeper than the description would let on. Titles cards at the beginning and end claim it is based on a true story or, at least, the protagonist is a real person, but the contours of the plot adhere so resolutely to those of a criminal thriller that you know Linklater and his co-scenarist, leading man Glen Powell, have taken the story into fabulist territory. And while the basic premise is by no means meta in execution, the script and direction constantly comment, even directly, on the whole sub-genre of paid assassin movies. After all, the titular character, Gary Johnson (Powell), a philosophy professor at the Univ. of New Orleans who moonlights for the police as a faux assassin to entrap people who solicit hit men, says more than once that “hit men don’t exist,” that the “occupation” was essentially made up by popular culture. It’s a theory I myself have often pondered while watching movies like David Fincher’s The Killer.

Linklater fortifies this idea by showing how Gary’s professional study of human behavior (“The self is a construction,” he tells his students) informs his various impersonations of paid assassins. Powell gets limitless comic mileage with these impersonations, each of which is tailored to the particular person who is endeavoring to hire him. Consequently, when he shows up as “Ron” to a meeting with a woman named Madison (Adria Arjona) who wants him to off her abusive husband, he adjusts his character’s cool, macho manner in such a way as to convince her to leave the guy instead, thus enraging the cops he works with by letting her get away. Later, he embarks on a hot affair with Madison as Ron, who is much more of a stud than Gary is. However, this ongoing impersonation becomes more than a liability, and the way Linklater resolves the various ensuing complications makes for plot development of rare ingenuity. If, like me, you find paid assassin movies redundant and predictable, the unexpected twists and turns that Hit Man follows will have you laughing and shaking your head all the way into next week.

Some viewers will balk at the story’s moral ambivalence, but, again, Hit Man is essentially a comment on popular entertainment while itself being popular entertainment of the most bracing and imaginative kind. And Powell earns his current reputation as the most interesting leading man in Hollywood. We often talk about movies within movies. Powell’s acting here comprises performances within performances, and all are not only convincing, but refreshingly articulate and coherent. It will likely be streaming pretty soon in Japan (it already is overseas), but I urge you to see it in a theater just to bathe in its intelligence. 

Now playing in Tokyo at Kadokawa Cinema Yurakucho (03-6268-0015), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Human Trust Cinema Shibuya (03-5468-5551).

Hit Man home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 All the Hits LLC