In 2001, journalist Skip Hollandsworth wrote a profile on Texas Monthly about Gary Johnson — a Vietnam vet, a psychology professor and an undercover agent for the Harris County DA’s office. Between giving lectures on human behavior and tending to his bonsai plants, Johnson would moonlight as a fake hitman in the Houston area, helping police departments set up elaborate sting operations on potential murder suspects. The article remained trapped in Hollywood limbo while Hollandsworth collaborated with fellow Texas native Richard Linklater on the screenplay for the 2011 true crime film Bernie.
23 years later, in Linklater’s latest noir-adjacent rom-com Hit Man, Johnson’s story is transposed onto present-day New Orleans. With a screenplay co-written by leading man Glen Powell, the film comically deconstructs the cultural mythology surrounding hired guns. Powell morphs between the dorky, jorts-wearing Johnson and an eclectic ensemble of contract killers. Some of his most memorable masquerades include a freckled English sociopath, a gun-toting skeet shooter and a Patrick Bateman knock-off.
The film takes a sharp turn from reality when Johnson, disguised as his suave alter ego Ron, meets with Madison (Adria Arjona) — a charming femme fatale desperate to get rid of her controlling husband. After this fateful meet-cute over a slice of pie, Johnson’s professional ethics are put to the test. Does a man’s need to satiate his libidinal impulses exceed his fear of the law? How hot does your date need to be for you to commit multiple felonies? Is any romantic partner worth a Jungian ego death? These age-old questions guide the philosophy of this sexy, at times corny, and wholly unserious screwball crime flick.
As someone who has dismissed, and often ragged on, Glen Powell, his performance in this film is truly revelatory. Though still sporting his signature shit-eating grin — a smile so obnoxious it was almost visible through his respirator in Top Gun: Maverick — Powell displays his full range as a performer. His natural onscreen charisma was already evident in Linklater’s 2016 college baseball comedy Everybody Wants Some!! Yet, Powell’s more recent work in films like Set it Up and Anybody But You left one to question whether or not he could be more than just another cookie-cutter white guy in Hollywood.
Gary Johnson is the perfect star vehicle for Powell — a role that allows the actor’s versatility to shine through a broad spectrum of dramatic moments, volleying between the insanely ridiculous and the intimately vulnerable. In one of the film’s most memorable sequences, Powell and Arjona engage in a frantically staged argument, shouting over one another while communicating via notes app to circumvent a police wire. Both actors bounce off one another in a perfectly chaotic comedic set piece, perfectly encapsulating the film’s absurd web of clandestine deceit. While not at all playing to the traditional expectations of a “hit man” protagonist, Powell delivers a nuanced performance as a morally dubious, yet infectiously likable leading man.
From Alain Delon’s Jef Costello to Keanu Reeves’ John Wick, the figure of the hit man has become one of the most overused archetypes in cinema. Even in David Fincher’s meta 2023 revenge flick, The Killer, an adaptation of the titular French graphic novel, the methodical terminator on a bloody warpath feels like a vacuous, borderline sadistic, spectacle. In stark contrast to Fincher’s nameless sociopath living in a world of drab grayish tones, Linklater and Powell subvert the cliches of the hit man to tell a surprisingly contemporary story — the psychological transformation of a soy boy.
Hit Man is a film about acting, not just in the dramatic sense but also with regards to more banal modes of performance. When on a date with Madison under the guise of Ron, Johnson flirtatiously proclaims “let me be your fantasy.” While it might seem like a throwaway line, this represents the identity crisis at the center of his work. If anything, Johnson’s process of entrapping his would-be clients, which entails thorough research and rehearsal, resembles the motions of online dating. Like preparing to meet a stranger through Hinge, he scans social media for any information on hobbies, political opinions and personality cues. It’s based on this data that Johnson molds each of his fake assassins.
Compared to other modern rom coms, Hit Man seems to have an acute understanding of relationships in the social media era: a process that demands constantly feigning authenticity and compatibility. Though most of us aren’t donning wigs or elaborate costumes to grab drinks with someone, Linklater captures a fundamental farce in modern companionship. Everything is a display of smoke and mirrors. We manipulate digital profiles and maintain carefully curated facades. With social interactions conducted largely through algorithmic calculations, radically modifying or totally reinventing ourselves is both convenient and necessary. Johnson’s double lives are not too far from the own lies we perform. We have one personality that conforms to legal precedents and social norms, the other self, a dialed-up renegade hiding behind digital anonymity.
However, by the end of the film, a lot of these ideas feel underdeveloped. In order to streamline Johnson’s story for a 115 minute Netflix comedy, nuances in Hollandsworth’s original profile are noticeably missing. Though the film does provide glimpses of the character’s private life, featuring brief montages of Johnson caring for his cats and tending to his houseplants, Linklater and Powell’s characterization can feel two-dimensional at times. The film never really grapples with the psychological impact of living a double life, especially one that requires a regular interaction with people itching to solicit murder. With the exception of meeting Madison, Johnson seems completely unphased by his work. While the moral question of Johnson’s entrapment schemes are raised in several court scenes, the film never really engages with the fact that these operations were effectively charging people with a non-existent crime.
While the film does rush to conclude its ideas with a mediocre payoff, Hit Man is an unapologetically self-aware film that has fun with its source material. In large part carried by the two central performances from Powell and Arjona, the film imbues the Gary Johnson story with comedy and eroticism, without ever sacrificing the darker, more intense contours of a noir thriller.