Hit Man review – Richard Linklater mixes philosophy and fun in true-crime caper

Richard Linklater’s latest is a jaunty action comedy that spins its machine-tooled high concept like a bicycle wheel – sometimes with shrewd intent, sometimes for pure fun. Loosely based on a longform true-crime article by Skip Hollandsworth, it follows the fortunes of Gary Johnson, a fake contract killer for the New Orleans police department, setting up stings in cheap diners while the cops wait outside. In the hands of a lesser director, Hit Man would surely have felt rather thin and disposable. But Linklater is a pro, and he manages to make the film’s fripperies feel borderline profound.

Glen Powell (who co-wrote the script with the director) plays Gary, a mild-mannered philosophy professor who leads an exotic double life. Off campus he’s Ron, cool and imposing, luring would-be criminals to their doom. These people sidle up to him with their tales of faithless wives and abusive husbands, but as soon as the deal has been struck, the cops slap on the handcuffs. Gary, of course, hasn’t the faintest idea about the assassination business, but like every good actor, he is happy to improvise. So he’ll explain that he avoids leaving evidence by putting a stick of dynamite in the victim’s mouth and drops severed fingers from his car window at regular five-mile intervals. The fact that these people are willing to swallow this bull only goes to show how dumb and desperate most of his clients are.

One day he meets Madison (Adria Arjona), a young woman who wants rid of her husband, and the two wind up having a proper conversation. Gary breaks character, but only a little. He’s still mostly Ron, sexy and decisive, because he can tell that this woman likes Ron and worries that she might not like Gary. “What if your self is a construct?” he likes to ask the students in his philosophy class – it’s something we build and adapt depending on where we are and who we’re with. In which case, every interaction contains an element of performance. Gary is performing across the diner table for Madison while she, for her part, is performing right back at him.

Inevitably, there is danger in all this everyday subterfuge – and naturally this danger is what Linklater wants to get into. Because if you run too far down the rabbit-hole, you eventually reach the point where the lies mount up, the centre can’t hold and you can no longer tell your id from your superego, or your face from your mask. Sure enough, by the midpoint of the film, Gary’s little sideline has become a stressful full-time occupation and he’s frantically playing both sides, toiling to prop up his burgeoning relationship with Madison while attempting to keep the cops off her trail. The antics that ensue are at once silly and smart. The film is like a slapstick spy caper made by a psychology major.

Gary has two jobs – and maybe the director does, too, in that he likes to juggle his high-minded, experimental, personal projects with rambunctious diversions that give the impression of having been shot at speed and casually tossed out into the world (perhaps at five-mile intervals, like those severed fingers). Given the choice, I think I slightly prefer the creator of Boyhood and Before Sunrise to the director of Bernie, School of Rock and the eminently enjoyable Hit Man – the Gary genre of films, as opposed to the movies made by Ron – but that’s just personal taste. These are two sides of the same coin, with Linklater’s signature stamp on each one. Flip the coin in the air. Heads or tails, it’s a winner.