115 minutes, available on Netflix 4 stars The story: Hollywood It Boy Glen Powell plays a mild-mannered New Orleans philosophy professor who has a side hustle posing as a hit man in local police stings. Complications arise when he falls for a beauty (Adria Arjona) engaging him to off her controlling husband (Evan Holtzman). The screwball neo-noir Hit Man from American director Richard Linklater is based on a true story, however much a professor with the hotness of Powell stretches credibility.
And that is the joke. The academic is Gary Johnson, and the names of his cats – Id and Ego – hint at the comedy’s mischievously played theme on the construct and mutability of identity. Gary assumes outrageous disguises for his undercover operations.
He is such a natural that the suave cold-blooded alias “Ray” he creates, for transactions with his paramour Madison (Arjona), becomes more Gary than Gary. The dorky egghead discovers his true, bada** self by inhabiting the persona of one. But Madison knows him only as an assassin.
Can he sustain a relationship predicated on a fantasy? It is hard to think too much about this when the gorgeous couple are sizzling up their not-infrequent love scenes. Indie cinema godhead Linklater has been casting his leading man since Fast Food Nation (2006) and then in Everybody Wants Some!! (2016). This was long before everyone else caught on to Powell’s star power in Top Gun: Maverick (2022) and romcom Anyone But You (2023).
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