This Movie Proves Glen Powell Is a Star

This assessment was initially printed on September 7, 2023, out of the Venice Movie Competition. We’re recirculating it with Hit Man now on Netflix.

“What number of of you actually know yourselves?” Philosophy lecturer Gary Johnson (Glen Powell) posits this query to his College of New Orleans class early on in Richard Linklater’s Hit Man. “What in case your self is a development, an phantasm … a task you’ve been enjoying for the reason that day you had been born?” It turns that he’s about to turn out to be a strolling reply to the query. It’s a wild story that a gap title tells us is “considerably true”: Johnson (an actual man) labored for some time for the New Orleans Police Division as a faux hit man for its sting operations, arriving at organized conferences sporting a wire after which getting the suspects to incriminate themselves by acquiring his providers.

An amiable, Honda Civic–driving, bird-watching Everyman in shorts and glasses, Gary in some way seems to be the proper faux murderer. “You may have this unreadable face,” a colleague tells him. “Completely forgettable.” He solely will get the gig at a second’s discover as a result of the standard man obtained caught beating up some teenagers and obtained himself a 120-day suspension. However Gary’s a pure: He walks into his first assembly anxiously reminding himself that he’s a killer and in some way convincingly transforms right into a badass as quickly as he meets his mark. It’s not not like the scene in Collateral the place Jamie Foxx’s mousy cabbie has to pose as Tom Cruise’s stone-cold murderer and immediately turns into a brand new man. There’s greater than a little bit of Cruise in Powell’s efficiency right here, the truth is. (One wonders if a few of that magic movie-star mud rubbed off whereas they had been making Prime Gun: Maverick collectively. Powell, it needs to be famous, has a co-screenwriting credit score on Hit Man.) Nevertheless it’s not a lot the white-haired killer of Collateral because the pushed, smiling, fresh-faced icon of the ’80s and early ’90s. If Glen Powell’s not already a star, this image would possibly nicely make him one.

It’s a movie-star position as a result of it’s at coronary heart a fantasy. As Gary tells us, hit males are, by and huge, a delusion. Why ought to a complete stranger threat demise row to kill your corporation rival or heartless partner or no matter for cash? Gary is successfully enjoying a work out of our collective creativeness. And on some stage, that liberates him. He researches his shoppers beforehand and tailors his search for their expectations of successful man: a neck tattoo right here, an overcoat there, typically darkish glasses, typically an accent. He could make up the character as he sees match as a result of the individuals he’s enjoying fairly merely don’t exist.

Then, after all, he meets a woman: Madison (Adria Arjona), a terrified spouse being plagued by an unstable, domineering husband. She tries to rent Gary, however he’s so taken along with her that he slyly convinces her to surrender on the thought as a result of he doesn’t wish to see her go to jail. Quickly, they’re smitten with one another — solely she thinks he’s nonetheless “Ron,” the grizzled, open-collared killer who confirmed her some real compassion and threw in a little bit of impromptu life teaching.

And Gary form of thinks he’s Ron, too. Or a minimum of, he turns into Ron at any time when he’s along with her, a lot in order that he’s now a demon in mattress. (“I used to be as soon as advised I believe an excessive amount of to be a superb lover,” he displays. “I like Ron. He’s not a thinker. He’s a doer.”) He additionally has the instincts of a harder man once they’re collectively. When Madison’s estranged husband spots them at a membership and threatens them, Gary instantly pulls out a gun, Clint Eastwood–fashion, and backs the man off.

We get a giddy thrill watching Gary rework as a result of he looks like such an unexceptional individual at first. Hit Man works concurrently as an indulgence in and a deconstruction of the essential transaction of stardom: It presents us with a man we will by no means be, then makes us consider for a second that we will be him, even because it tells us that such a man doesn’t exist within the first place. However Linklater’s amiable filmmaking and Powell’s charming, self-aware swagger are infused with the concept that something is feasible. They make the entire world appear open, malleable, and accepting. As Gary tells his class, “If the universe isn’t mounted, then neither are you.”

A whole lot of very dumb issues have been stated concerning the auteur concept in recent times, all of which ignore its lovely central tenet, which is that some filmmakers’ sensibilities shine by means of their work irrespective of the fabric. Linklater’s breeziness and generosity as a director haven’t at all times labored to his benefit — I can consider a few earlier efforts that would have used a darker, extra exacting eye — however right here, they work wonders.

If one had been within the behavior of enjoying artists off each other, one may even say that Hit Man serves as a rebuke to the opposite hit-man motion pictures at Venice this 12 months — to the self-conscious portent of David Fincher’s The Killer, or the graphic tedium of Concord Korine’s Aggro Dr1ft. All of those filmmakers are nicely conscious of the tiredness of the style they’re working in and try to poke holes in it, every in his personal means. However solely Linklater’s feels genuinely recent. He’s having enjoyable, his star is having enjoyable, they usually permit the viewers to have enjoyable as nicely. Which in flip makes the image’s overt philosophical digressions, within the type of Gary’s lectures to his courses, equally easygoing and full of life. Linklater’s light contact is his secret weapon, and Hit Man is likely to be a masterpiece.