Netflix’s Hit Man isn’t just a breezy crime caper — it’s a terrific rom-com
I first saw Hit Man, the new Richard Linklater movie now streaming on Netflix, at an early morning press screening at the London Film Festival. The film played really well and the audience was into it, but I was still shocked when one late scene drew huge peals of laughter from the audience and an actual applause break at its climax. An applause break! At 9:30 in the morning! From film critics! British film critics! (Something you may not know about British people: We don’t applaud in movie theaters. Ever.)
Just as surprising: the content of the scene that drew that response. Given the movie’s premise — a professor poses as a contract killer to help the police arrest people for soliciting murder, but gets lost in the role — you might guess the audience was hooting at a Tarantino-esque slapstick bloodbath. But the scene was, in fact, the most cleverly conceived and delightfully played piece of pure romantic comedy I’d seen in years.
As a filmmaker, Linklater is fluent in genre conventions, but he often finds his own space in the cracks between them. In that sense, Hit Man is true to form. Written by Linklater and its star (and frequent Linklater collaborator, and Top Gun: Maverick heavy) Glen Powell, it’s an easygoing movie that doesn’t break a sweat as it flits between comedy, romance, suspense, philosophical musing, and a quiet tinge of noirish darkness. Under a straightforward, pleasing exterior, the movie is elusive and prone to shape-shifting — a bit like its main character.
That character is Gary Johnson (Powell), a placid, nerdy professor of philosophy and psychology with a talent for electronics. That talent leads him into a side hustle running recording equipment for the New Orleans police department, and helping with a sting operation where a cop named Jasper (The Walking Dead’s Austin Amelio, in venal mode) poses as an assassin to catch people in the act of soliciting murder. When Jasper gets suspended and Gary is parachuted into the sting at the last
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