Review of Hit Man, directed by Richard Linklater

So far, from what I have noticed, 2024 has been the year of Glen Powell. I had no idea who this man was before my sister dragged me to see Anyone But You, as it was her turn to pick what we watched at our local movie theater that week. I didn’t think that movie was that special, but a definitely throwback to the 2000s.

Anyways, I forgot about Glen Powell after seeing the movie, assuming he was someone who was a trend. And man, I was right in such a different way about that. I had an AMC subscription up until the end of graduate school, as it was my way of letting off steam by seeing a movie instead of thinking about 1930s Korean women’s literature.

It was during those visits that I began getting hit with the Twister movie’s ads with Glen Powell, and then one day I opened up my Netflix, as I prepared to go to Korea, and decided to see what was up with the streaming world. And that was when I saw this movie was on there.

At first I resisted watching it. It sounded like a typical bro movie, except now it’s 2024 and we have some upgraded elements to those movies. But in the month between grad school and preparing to move to South Korea, I had absolutely nothing to do, so I watched it out of pure boredom.

Here’s my review! I don’t want to ramble too much in the introduction.

A part-time university professor and part-time fake hitman finds himself falling for his next target.

In this film, Powell portrays Gary Johnson, a part-time university professor at the University of New Orleans. His students make fun of him because of how boring and generic his life is, but in his free time he helps the cops with sting operations. Another cop, Jasper, pretends to be a hit man to get customers and arrest them, but he’s suspended, and Gary is roped directly into his role.

However, Gary is freakishly good at this role, and slips into different personas easily. His next target is a woman named Madison, who wants to kill her husband because of how abusive he is. He adopts the personality of a man named Ron as he befriends her, but he’s attracted to her quickly.

She tries to hire him to kill the husband, and he refuses to take the money and tells her she needs to start over and find something new. This annoys the police department, as if he had taken the money, she would be able to be arrested for the crime of soliciting a hit man to kill her husband.

Yet Gary still continues to see her, pretending to be Ron. They keep meeting up to have passionate sex, and it seems more and more like they are going to have a serious relationship.

The operation is still going on lowkey, but he teaches Madison how to use a gun. He specifically instructs her to shoot in the heart if someone’s coming after her. One night though, they go clubbing and have a confrontation with her ex-husband Ray.

Gary has to pill out a gun to get him to back out, but as they go to a restaurant, they run into Jasper, who realizes that the two are going be an item from now on. Things only escalate from there, as Ray contacts Gary and tries to hire him as his hitman. Ray storms out after he reveals the truth to Ray, and Ray declares he is going to kill Madison himself.

Madison doesn’t seem to care once she realizes Gary said no to the kill, but later in the day, he’s summoned to work. Ray has been found dead, and he was shot in the heart. To make things worse, the bullets match a gun like the one Madison had. Gary realizes it was her straight away, but his coworkers are trying to decide if it was a drug deal or not.

Jasper seems to realize, too, what might have happened, but Gary shifts the blame. He goes to talk to Madison to come clean, she does end up realizing Ron isn’t real, and Gary isn’t as cool. She kicks him out because he lied to her.

Gary returns to the department, and they’re starting to believe Madison did it. He’s sent with a wire to talk to Madison, but he types on a phone for her to not say anything, and they play the situation off. The cops now believe that Madison is innocent, but Jasper doesn’t think so.

He camps out, then tries to extort money from them right then and there. Madison drugs his drink, and as he’s passing out from it, Gary kills him with a plastic bag and suffocation. They then make the plan to stage his death as a suicide, not a murder. They get away with it, and the film ends with Madison and Gary married with kids.

Overall Thoughts

I made a comparison on my Letterboxd comparing this to a hyper masculine and adult version of She’s the Man, and I still kind of believe that even after reflecting on this throughout the blog post. It feels like the boys’ version of that movie with more sexualization and whatnot.

I mean the movie was entertaining, but it’s not like it was high art. I think I was making the She’s the Man comparison because it feels like something that should have came out in the 2000s.

Regardless, the plot in this isn’t the greatest either. I don’t see it becoming something we remember in the future, but it was fun while watching.

Go watch it if you’re interested and have not already.

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