An early draft of this review was originally published on May 24, 2024,
at Give Me Some Light on Substack, months before it appeared here.
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Ever since it became clear that Greg Mottola’s Fletch wasn’t going to become the hit that it deserved to be, I’ve been bummed out that American moviegoers don’t seem interested in funny and smart franchises for grownups. I’d watch a new Fletch every year if Mottola and Jon Hamm could turn around movies as solid as that one.
Along similar lines, whenever I hear the names “Jennifer Lopez” or “George Clooney,” I fall into a funk about how great Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight was, how much I wish it had been the launch of a series in which the writers tries to surpass their earlier achievements, how neither Clooney nor Lopez have ever matched the supernatural heights they reached in that film.
So, if we can’t get that ideal series or my dream sequel to Out of Sight, I’ll take this — a Hit Man movie — from Linklater every three years. Why three years? I want the screenplays to be as strong as this one, and good writing takes time.
I don’t need to join the chorus of critics hailing this as the big star-making turn for Glen Powell, who has been the Next Big Star On-Deck for several years now (arguably since Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!, but at least since Top Gun: Maverick). Nor will I be the first to say that Adria Arjona (who was stunning in the Star Wars series Andor) can match him step for step, line for line here. They’re not quite Clooney and Lopez — or, when it comes to banter, even Clooney and Zeta-Jones from Intolerable Cruelty. But they’re the best old-fashioned guy-and-a-dame Hollywood pairing I’ve seen in a while.
But the real star here is Linklater, showing off his range with a confidence I haven’t seen from him in a while. This is the guy who’s given us numerous arthouse films in a variety of genres, all of them worth going back to repeatedly: Boyhood, Bernie, the Before trilogy, Waking Life, and Dazed and Confused. But it’s also the guy whose last movie was the underwhelming animated memoir Apollo 10 1/2 and something called Last Flag Flying that most people who saw it have already forgotten. He’s firing on all cylinders here with what may become his biggest crowd-pleaser since School of Rock.
I’d recommend you avoid the most recent Netflix trailer — yes, the one I’ve linked here in the image captions — as it spoils so many of the movie’s best moments and biggest laughs.
And, for the same reason, it’s probably best I say as little as possible about the plot. Suffice it to say that Gary Johnson (Powell) is a college philosophy professor who has a side gig helping undercover cops catch killers by wearing a wire, putting on disguises (Fletch-style), and getting bad guys to spill the deets on their murderous intentions. In our story, he targets a woman who wants her husband killed and ends up more than charmed by her. Before he knows it, he’s trying to protect her from an abusive husband, lying to the cops about his investment in her situation, and questioning his own motives as he gets deeper and deeper into ethical compromises.
It’s slick. It’s consistently funny and surprising. The supporting cast is a surprising crew, all of them excellent. (I’m especially happy to see Parks and Recreation’s Retta again, but The Walking Dead’s Austin Amelio is especially strong here in a very complicated part.) All the way through, I was braced for Linklater to stumble in his precarious balance of comedy, intrigue, and playfulness with big ethical questions.
But he did it. He pulled it off. He gave me exactly the kind of traditional Hollywood comedy for grownups that I’ve been missing, and scratched an itch I’ve had for a long, long time. After so many over-long and overly expensive franchise installments, and an Oscar season burgeoning with “important” movies, this is exactly what the doctor ordered for Summer 2024. I think word of mouth is going to be huge, and people are going to love it. Give us more, please, Linklater.
Having said that, I hate to wrap up my review with a disclaimer — but here we go:
In the very last scene of the film, I think Linklater and Powell lose their balance. In a rush of sentimentality, they lose their judgment and courage as storytellers. They give in to the wishes of those who think Love is more important than Conscience. I won’t spoil it, but I have serious issues with decisions made in that final scene. Don’t get me wrong — I love a good dark comedy. And if I thought the film had slowly prepared us for the revolting choices made in the final moments, if I thought Hit Man was a sophisticated satire about the incremental collapse of a conscience, I might find be persuaded to read this conclusion as a dark twist in a cautionary tale. I’ve seen some make that argument. But it sure didn’t read that way to me. And what’s more, if that is what Linklater’s going for, he needs to make it work, because I think Hit Man is going to have audiences cheering for a decision that — like the conclusion of Out of Sight — sets off all of my Ethics 101 alarms.
I end up saying to myself, “They were this close to a perfect summer comedy. But now I have to recommend it with disclaimers for the sake of my conscience?!”