Glen Powell goes chameleonic in Hit Man

In his seminal essay “Notes on Film Noir,” director and screenwriter Paul Schrader wrote that a noir protagonist: 

“…dreads to look ahead…tries to survive by the day, and if unsuccessful at that, he retreats to the past. The film noir’s techniques emphasize loss, nostalgia, lack of clear priorities, insecurity…In such a world style becomes paramount; it is all that separates one from meaninglessness.”

Hit Man, the latest from Austin’s own director Richard Linklater and actor Glen Powell, looks like the opposite of film noir, particularly as described by Schrader, at first. It’s a funny, sexy, sunny character study, in which Powell and co-star Adria Arjona build a thorny romance that turns on curiosity as much as it does attraction. Powell’s mild-mannered philosophy professor Gary Johnson, who’s moonlightsing as an imposter hitman for the New Orleans Police Department, provides a chance for him to go both broad and deep. It’s consistently a hoot.

And it is very much noir, like Schrader described. Noir like the deadly courtship of Mrs. Dietrichson and Mr. Neff in Double Indemnity. It’s a cousin to Linklater’s deeply unsettling rotoscoped Philip K. Dick-adapting science fiction noir A Scanner Darkly. Powell’s Gary and Arjona’s Madison Figueroa may not fall (morally) as far as good old Walter Neff or get as lost in themselves as Keanu Reeves’ Bob Arctor, but they do dance on that precipice and get tangled up in the selves they’ve been and the selves they want to be.

Madison was so boxed in by her hateful scuzzball of a husband Ray (Evan Hotlzman cranking up the oily, childish entitlement) that having him killed seemed like the only way she could get clear of the nothing he demanded she be. Getting clear of him is a chance to discover who she still is, who she wants to be. Seeking out Ron, the hitman who convinced her not to hire him, take the money and get gone, is a chance to discover what she wants in a sexual and then romantic partner. Gary told himself that he was content with his static loneliness. Playing a plethora of hitmen was a chance to step outside the box he had built for himself. Playing the suave, empathetic Ron for Madison is more—a spark that lights a flame in Gary, makes him see something in himself he had not seen before.

For Madison and Gary, it’s thrilling. For Arjona and Powell, it’s a prime opportunity to bounce off each other, to spin Linklater’s longstanding interest in the ways people hang out into an exploration of desire, passion and what can grow alongside those feelings. For the audience, it’s high-grade steam—distinct from but a cousin to the work the Challengers team did earlier this year. 

Indeed, between its sexiness, its morbid humor, and its sincere fascination with the ever-continuing work of being, Hit Man is a welcomely grown-up movie. Heightened as some of Gary’s disguises (courtesy of Juliana Hoffpauir’s costumes and Ally Vickers’ hair department) can get (my personal favorites include a 21stst century Patrick Bateman and someone I can only describe as a murderous mod who got too into Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom), the zaniness is always built on humanity. Gary’s hitmen are a collaborative illusion, built from his acting and his would-be clients’ willingness to buy his performance. That goes for Ron and Madison’s relationship too—even if Ron wasn’t Gary, he and Madison want to believe that what they’ve got going is just for fun. They aren’t catching feelings. They don’t need more. They don’t have to worry about his being a hitman and her starting her life over from zero.

Would that it were so simple. Live in an illusion long enough, and there’s a risk that it’ll become the truth. Or that you’ll think it is the truth. Over the course of Hit Man, Gary and Madison turn and get turned upside down and inside out. That’s nothing compared to Ray, who takes Madison leaving him as an insult. That’s nothing compared to Jasper (Austin Amelio, who Powell previously acted alongside in Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!!) Gary’s predecessor in fake hitman work—a sneering embodiment of law enforcement as state-sanctioned jackassery who cannot conceive of anything he’s done being anything other than good, for himself at least.

Following Gary and Madison as they navigate who they are to each other and to themselves is a delight. Seeing Ray and Jasper try to ravage other folks that they might cling to the lies they’ve told themselves is sobering. Linklater and Powell’s script juggles highs and lows and captures the need for a self that Schrader describes as key to noir with skill and style. It’s a joy of a picture.