Hit Man (2024)
Directed by Richard Linklater
A mild-mannered professor moonlighting as a fake hit man in police stings ignites a chain reaction of trouble when he falls for a potential client.
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He pulls off impersonations of Tilda Swinton and American Psycho's Patrick Bateman and, far more challengingly, a deft mixture of the more aggressive man that Gary wants to become as well as the nerdy facade he presents to his students and coworkers.
At one point, it’s a full-blown impression of Christian Bale in American Psycho, glossy skin and all.
Remember the team from the tactical van in True Lies who would bicker and squabble as Arnold Schwarzenegger would take down the bad guys? When he isn’t teaching, Gary (Glen Powell) is the electricals expert in a low-rent version of that.
Martin McDonagh's In Bruges played around with the comedy aspect, and masterfully so – it quickly became a film for others of the genre to aspire to.
Leaving those qualms to one side, however, Hit Man clearly delivers the sort of smart, broadly funny comedy not seen on a big screen since 2016’s The Nice Guys: this is a deeply likable, beautifully paced narrative, a supremely elegant and slippery work that kind of pulls the viewer in, making them feel specially catered to.
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But a film like Hit Man also underscores the lack of smartly written, well made comedies for the adult audience. The most recent example that comes to mind might be 2018’s Game Night, but comedies of this nature are simply hard to come by. Hit Man is thoroughly enjoyable from beginning to end, and hopefully a star-turning role for the ever-so-deserving Powell.
His brand of humor is extremely fun when thrown into a story like this, and by making Gary Johnson a professor, he can inject moments of philosophical discussions that remind of films like Slacker, A Scanner Darkly, or Waking Life.
Linklater has worked in every imaginable genre over his long career, but whether he’s making futuristic sci-fi like A Scanner Darkly or a true-crime drama like Bernie, his storytelling always has a sweet sort of shagginess to it.
An all-time master of tone, atmosphere, and mood, Linklater (Boyhood, the Before trilogy, A Scanner Darkly) delivers one of his lightest, most engaging films in his career.
The first bite of Hit Man is a Linklater salad with extra dressing––School of Rock meets Waking Life meets A Scanner Darkly… at least under the surface.
People may be conditioned to hate those movies, but the sexually charged frames Goldblatt creates are enough to entice intense homoerotic energy through Val Kilmer/George Clooney's Batman and Chris O'Donnell's Robin (the “not just a friend, a partner” hand-clasp in Batman Forever remains one of the most powerfully erotic images in all of comic book cinema), stuff that is no longer produced in mainstream cinema, except for when Luca Guadagnino decided to make cannibalism and tennis sexy in Bones and All and Challengers.