Episode 226: Hit Man

“All pie is good pie.”
After Kinds of Kindness last week, Movie Night Extravaganza decided to take it easy this week with Richard Linklater’s Hit Man. An action rom com Glen Powell vehicle that is easy to mistake for much more generic and lightweight Netflix fare.  

Forrest Miller, Conan Neutron and J. Andrew World keep it to the core on this one. 

What can we say? We dug it. Getting by mostly on panache, personality and on screen chemistry, it works. Is it B tier Linklater? You bet it is. Is it very watchable? God damn right! Dude makes entertaining movies.

This film about a nebbish Philosophy/Psychology Professor at a State College that cosplays as a hit man, but who is actually moonlighting for the New Orleans Police Department helping with sting operations. Got it?

Glen Powell’s hapless emotionally distant weirdo professor Gary Johnson, apparently a real guy, is thrown into the deep end when he has to start being the fake Hit Man, and not just fiddling with the tech, when a colleague is suspended for beating up teenagers. They net/entrap these people that believe they’re trying to hire a contract killer. 

It helps how fun the movie is that the Police Squad is Donna from Parks and Rec, a discount version of Aziz Ansari, and Dwight from the Walking Dead/

Hijinks ensue, when our fake good looking Professor/Undercover Guy ends up falling for a beautiful woman he’s supposed to be entrapping. The deeply impressive Adria Arjona. Who is very clearly not just drop dead gorgeous but a STAR. Can’t wait to see her in more stuff. 

Glen Powell is a guy with those Hollywood good looks that could so easily just coast if he wanted to. But, he’s been pretty adamant about not just doing that. None of us ever thought too much one way or the other about him, but he is clearly going the Brad Pitt route of interesting character work and we are here for it.

Maybe it’s the fact that he’s always been cast by off-beat creatives whether that’s Ryan Murphy or Richard Linklater.. but he co-wrote this screenplay as well as starred.

The whole thing is saturated with this Linklaterian (???) sensibility that definitely needed somebody else, like a Glen Powell, to tone down the excesses.

We not saying that Richard Linklater has always had something to “prove” but he’s always front-loaded his screenplays with his thoughts on philosophy and spirituality and psychology in a way that can easily make the narrative coherence disappear.
Glen Powell possibly helped keep this grounded and easily accessible and digestable.

This is a great story about actualizing who you want to be: or, to use the vulgarian term: Fake it, until you make it.

There’s such an easy charm here that even the most absurd character work (as the guy playing the Hitman’s various tabula Rasa identities) all work and work pretty darn well. It is actually funny.
It’s a (good) rom-com! It’s a noir! It’s a character study!
Is this a “Spy Rom Com?” 

STOP! It is all these things.

Also, best usage of the notes app in any film, ever.

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