Glen Powell recently announced that he would be taking a sabbatical from Hollywood to return to Texas and finish his college degree. It’s perhaps odd timing from an actor whose stardom has required a long courtship of the public, stretching from his charming turn as John Glenn in Hidden Figures to the rampant box-office success of Anyone But You, opposite Sydney Sweeney. (Fear not, Powell Army: Twisters hits cinemas on July 19th.)
Hit Man, which the actor wrote with Richard Linklater, is Powell’s third collaboration with the director (a fellow Austinite). Powell plays Gary Johnson, a divorced, profoundly unhip philosophy professor at a New Orleans university who moonlights as the tech operative with his local police department during its sting operations. One fateful afternoon Gary is required to stand in for the “hired gun”, posing as a hit man to lure would-be clients.
Thus begins a double life to rival the bespectacled befuddlement of Clark Kent: by day Gary drives a Honda Civic and chills with his cats; by night he’s Ron, a charismatic killer for hire with questionable taste in wigs.
This complicated arrangement is further muddled by Madison (Adria Arjona), a young woman who wants to bump off her abusive husband. They embark on a crazy affair, while Gary (or possibly Ron) covers her tracks. “What if your self is a construct?” Gary asks his students, in one of the movie’s least subtle moments.
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Based on a profile of Johnson in Texas Monthly magazine, by Skip Hollandsworth, this old-fashioned sexy caper makes merry with unreliable narration, slapstick and the stress of remembering which lie you told. The frothy tone and fast pacing obscure darker corners that might have been fun to explore, notably the ethics of entrapment and a romance entirely predicated on pretence and performance.
Arjona brings heat to an undeveloped character. Powell, who manages to wring a moment of magnetism from iPhone notes, inevitably steals the show.
Hit Man is on Netflix from Friday, June 7th
