In the new Netflix film Hit Man, a character implicitly suggests that the film’s protagonist, a college philosophy professor named Gary Johnson, has a face as unremarkable as his name. It is this anonymity that makes Gary the perfect person to conduct sting operations on behalf of the local police department, in which he essentially tricks people into confessing their murderous desires. Gary does this by posing as a hitman, a profession that (he tells us in a wry voiceover) exists only in the movies. “The idea that there are people out there on a retail level that you can just hire to eliminate your worst relationship issues… It’s a total pop-cultural fantasy,” he says, over footage of famous movie assassins.
The fact that Gary is played in the film by Glen Powell certainly raises some questions about that unremarkable face bit, because no amount of chipmunk comparisons could convince anybody with a pair of eyes that he isn’t one of the most good-looking men alive. But as adaptable as Powell has proven himself to be in a variety of genres, he isn’t exactly, say, Daniel Day Lewis when it comes to chameleonic performances. Powell, who also co-wrote the screenplay for this movie alongside the legendary director Richard Linklater, appears to be having fun with his own image as a leading man on the cusp of stardom, in addition to making strong statements about the idea of masculinity itself.
To help nab the sketchy men and women who ‘hire’ him to kill their spouses or business partners, Gary dons a series of disguises that are only one step above your average Saturday Night Live costume. He also adopts a different persona in each sting, tailored to suit what his would-be clients would imagine a hitman looks like. In one scene he’s a trench-coated Russian, and in another, he’s a tattooed Bostonian. In a third, he’s... Tilda Swinton from Snowpiercer? After a riveting introductory scene in which Gary gets a confession by play-acting as contract killer who seemingly disposes of bodies in his family-owned bayou, the movie skips through a montage that places him squarely at the intersection of performance art and murderous intent previously occupied by Bill Hader in the HBO series Barry.
But Hit Man takes a hard left into a comedy noir territory when, out on another sting, a breathtaking young woman approaches Gary at a diner — he’s pretending to be a charming hunk named Ron this time; essentially AI’s idea of a rom-com lead — and tells him about the abusive husband that she wants out of her life. Madison is scared, visibly on her last legs in a toxic relationship that she has been running from for years. Sensing that she can be saved — he’s also obviously attracted to her — Gary makes a sudden executive decision that stuns his colleagues in the surveillance vehicle parked outside. He tells Madison to rethink her choices, and to use the money that she was going to pay him to start a new life. It’s a cracker of a meet cute, complete with an instant-classic zinger: “All pie is good pie.”
Played by Adria Arjona, Madison is both seductive and slippery, a vulnerable victim desperately seeking her Prince Charming. The ethics of this arrangement are dubious, but of course they begin seeing each other. She doesn't know that ‘Ron’ isn’t actually a hitman; heck, she has no idea that his name isn’t Ron at all. The mild-mannered Gary, meanwhile, begins to enjoy playing this infinitely more confident, wildly charismatic alter ego. There is, however, a catch. What Gary is really doing is gaslighting Madison into believing that he's somebody else; a deeply patriarchal corner of his psyche, it seems, has activated the male saviour figure inside him. But the film doesn't want you to dwell on this for too long.
For someone who has been openly derisive of Marvel movies in the past, this is perhaps as close as Powell is going to come to playing a superhero. His scenes with Arjona — and this might sound like high praise — evoke some of the same raw chemistry that Linklater extracted from Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in his Before Trilogy of films. And that’s because he allows actors to stretch their legs, without confining them to prison-like plots. For instance, Madison and ‘Ron’ aren’t living in the movie-imposed misconception that every conversation they have must be about immediate objectives.
This is the same approach that made the recent Mr & Mrs Smith series a cut above the rest. Hit Man has several memorable scenes in which ‘Ron’ and Madison attempt to playfully peel back the layers of each other’s personalities; it’s like they know they’re participating in some kind of real-life role-playing exercise, but that’s what makes their blossoming romance more exciting. That’s what makes the screen drip with desire.
Hit Man is endlessly interested in the idea of self, and the sometimes minor differences in how people behave when they’re with others and when they’re by themselves. There’s a reason, after all, that Gary is a philosophy professor. The movie also revisits pop-culture’s favourite chicken-or-egg quandary: Who does Mary Jane Watson love more; Peter Parker or Spider-Man? And if love is the ultimate goal, must one kill the other to survive?
What really seems to fascinate Linklater more than anything else, however, is the idea of rediscovery; we’re told that Gary was once married, but while his ex-wife is expecting a child with her new partner, he remains staunchly subservient to the idea of what they once had. It’s clear that he felt inadequate when they were together, and perhaps that is the biggest reason behind his deep desire to be someone else. But Linklater doesn’t make this a dense character study in any way; Hit Man is, primarily, a rip-roaring genre picture, and one of the best acquisitions that Netflix has made in recent times.
Hit Man
Director - Richard Linklater
Cast - Glen Powell, Adria Arjona, Austin Amelio, Retta, Sanjay Rao