Can a lame haircut turn Glen Powell into a character actor? Here’s two more for you: Is Glen Powell a huge movie star in the making, thanks to “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Anyone But You”? And if he isn’t, is he at least nimble and versatile enough to play one when needed? The answers to those questions are encouraging. I doubt that would’ve been the case four or five years or seven or eight films ago. In the highly engaging “Hit Man,” now in a few theaters and heading to Netflix June 7, Powell reunites with his fellow Texan, director and screenwriter Richard Linklater, for a romantic comedy with a few nicely plotted turns and storytelling priorities, including little to no interest in jacking up narrative stakes the usual way, i.
e., people getting pistol-whipped or shot up for laughs, or kicks. “Hit Man” takes it easier.
It comes from Skip Hollandsworth’s 2001 Texas Monthly feature about a Houston undercover master of deception, Gary Johnson, who at the time worked for the Harris County district attorney’s office. His job: Faking like he was a professional killer for hire in sting operations. Lots of them.
Successful ones. “Although plenty of cops have pretended to be hit men in undercover murder-for-hire investigations,” Hollandsworth wrote, “Johnson is the Laurence Olivier of the field.” The script by Linklater and Powell takes the premise and goes its own way, resetting things in Louisiana.
This version of Johnson is a sweet, divorced, cat-lo.