The upcoming Netflix release, “Hit Man” feels tailor made for the sensibilities of director-writer Richard Linklater. The somewhat breezy, somewhat romantic, somewhat philosophical comedy follows Glenn Powell’s Gary (in his first credit as a writer on film) as an undercover police contractor whose part-time work posing as a hitman begins to bleed into his personal life when he falls in love with a client.
The is the kind of premise that offers hints of the philosophical ambivalence that Linklater’s filmography has often revelled in, an approach to an inherently unfair world that finds characters taking their fates into their own hands. It’s a compelling idea, and there are enough knotty threads that linger in “Hit Man” to make it an intriguing puzzle to ponder, even as the actual film is less engaging – or rewarding – than the promise of its premise
Powell made his film debut more than two decades ago, and in the last ten years has been working progressively and showing up in enough things while many have wondered why he has not become more famous. His supporting role in Linklater’s “Everybody Wants Some” eight years ago felt like an important turning point in Powell’s career, even if his place as a star in the Hollywood system still felt fragile. “Hit Man” offers a decisive opportunity for Powell to display his gifts. The earlier sections offer hints of an amusing undercover comedy as Gary interacts with his colleagues. When he meets a beleaguered woman (Adria Arjona as Madison) who wants to kill her husband to escape his emotional abuse, Gary’s typical professionalism is interrupted. He convinces her to take the money and leave him instead, a choice that turns the film that follows into romantic comedy, romantic thriller, and then some other genres all offering Powell a chance to remain front and centre.
The advertisements for “Hit Man” have prioritised a sequence in the film, which is much briefer than the trailers suggest, where Powell dons a series of increasingly outlandish disguises as he embodies various versions of a potential hitman. None of this is necessary for his job, but as Gary explains to the actual police-team he works with, he finds it necessary to personify the figure of his mole-hitman by embodying the kind of character that the client needs to trust. Abandoning Gary, and donning another identity is the way to the truth.
This vaguely philosophical approach to what might seem like a very basic undercover mole job makes sense for Gary who teaches philosophy to a classroom of listless young people at a college in New Orleans. The screenplay (Powell co wrote with Linklater) gets a lot of mileage out of this fact, as Gary’s class sessions begin to punctuate the rhythms of the main plot and his undercover work begins to take over his life. I can understand the allure of the framing.
The jocular tone of “Hit Man”, heavily dependent on Sandra Adair’s typically diligent editing, is intentionally misdirecting the audience from the ethical dilemmas that begin to creep up on these characters. By introducing Gary’s philosophical monologues early on, “Hit Man” provides itself with a built-in context for the questions of identity and belonging that begin to crystallise when Gary meets Madison again, in disguise as his hitman character. Things get complicated when Madison (and Gary) begin to fall in love with the fake-hitman more than the real-Gary.
The trouble is, the framing ends up emphasising a schism between various sections of “Hit Man” that don’t quite coalesce and as the initially light humour of the earlier sections give way to the more ethically complex humour of the later moments of the film, the philosophising begins to feel too didactic for the lightness of the film to sustain. Linklater has been previously more efficient at balancing difficult topics with joviality; he’s less successful here. In “Hitman”, the sharp lines between the characters meant to be good and the characters meant to be bad create a dynamic where rather than being compelling, hinging on humorous things that are simultaneously uncomfortable, the serious acts of gravity in its world feel less meaningful than they should for the emotional complexities to be as effective.
Too much in writing, and performance, often seems to sand off the difficult aspects of its “good guys” rendering their murkier actions too superficial to engage with. Or, it turns its bad characters into such one-dimensional foils that the philosophical concerns that ground it feel less evocative as a text about morality or choices. It’s a strange quality of a film that sets up so many intriguing ideas about pretending, imposters, acts of “evil” as essential to the good of the world, only for the actual praxis of the film to be one that often feels too quick to avoid really sitting with difficult questions. Shane F Kelly’s cinematography is pleasant and bright, but it also feels similarly avoidant of complex framing.
Powell, a performer I have been generally ambivalent on, is doing his sharpest onscreen work even if I’m occasionally dubious about his ability to play “normal”. “Hit Man” hinges on Gary’s lonely schmuck who needs to don his made-up identities to feel confident, but it’s a crisis that feels just slightly off when Powell never really completely sells the cadence of Gary’s reticence. It’s a quality that makes his transformation over the course of the film feel less striking than it might be. Arjona has it worse because the film is uncertain of who Madison is beyond a very beautiful woman. Her character motivations seem to change from scene to scene so that any actor might flounder, and by the time the screenplay places her front and centre, the competing threads of what is supposed to be her identity begin to clash too much to satisfy.
It all goes down easy and breezy enough that I can recognise how the charms of “Hit Man” might suffice for audiences. Powell enthusiasts will also be lucky to have him in a leading role that depends on the easy, movie-star charm. Individual moments linger. Like the easy sexual chemistry of Powell and Arjona in sections that feel vivid and engaging. A late-film sequence where two characters perform a conversation trying to evade the police listening in. But so much of “Hit Man” feels like it’s almost on the verge of doing something that could be more meaningful. It’s a breezy romp in its way, but little of the emotions and philosophy of these characters feel deep enough to linger long beyond the closing-credits.
Hit Man premieres on June 7 on Netflix
