You think you’ve already seen a lot of Glen Powell? Just wait until Hit Man arrives this summer. The Richard Linklater action-comedy is the best showcase of Powell’s talents, offering him a chance to be funny and charming in a film that seems built for him…because it was. Powell co-wrote the script based on the Texas Monthly article about a professor and volunteer police officer who poses as a reliable hitman to entrap criminals, only to have things go awry when his various personas are a bit too believable.
The film also stars Adria Arjona, along with Austin Amelio, Retta, Sanjay Rao, Molly Bernard, and Evan Holtzman. Arjona plays a criminal/client who falls for one of his personas, creating an awkward scenario.
Here’s the synopsis: Oscar-nominated director Richard Linklater’s sunlit neo-noir stars Glen Powell as strait-laced professor Gary Johnson, who moonlights as a fake hit man for the New Orleans Police Department. Preternaturally gifted at inhabiting different guises and personalities to catch hapless people hoping to bump off their enemies, Gary descends into morally dubious territory when he finds himself attracted to one of those potential criminals, a beautiful young woman named Madison (Adria Arjona). As Madison falls for one of Gary’s hit man personas — the mysteriously sexy Ron — their steamy affair sets off a chain reaction of play-acting, deception, and escalating stakes. Co-written by Linklater and Powell and inspired by an unbelievable true story, Hit Man is a cleverly existential comedy about identity.
In case you can’t tell, I loved Hit Man when I saw it at Sundance. It’s fully won me over as a Powell fan, something Top Gun: Maverick, Devotion, and other films he’s been good in were incapable of doing.
Hit Man premieres on Netflix on June 7th, preceded by a limited theatrical release.
