Hit Man Director : Richard Linklater Cert : None Genre : Comedy Starring : Glen Powell, Adria Arjona, Austin Amelio, Retta Running Time : 1 hr 55 mins 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.
“.
