‘Hit Man’ Review: Richard Linklater Delivers The Year’s Most Killer Comedy

“Gary Johnson” seems like the kind of unassuming name a screenwriter might make up for someone content in his mundane routine. It’s the perfect name for the character Glen Powell plays in Hit Man, the film he wrote alongside director Richard Linklater, which introduces us to Johnson as a smiling, simple, slightly dorky psychology teacher at a New Orleans high school. Gary lives alone with his two cats named Id and Ego, and on occasion, he assists the local police with tech troubleshooting for their surveillance equipment, which one day leads to him taking on a role that runs completely counter to his personality: an undercover assassin. But, as with the protagonist in Linklater’s 2011 mortician romance Bernie, Gary is also a real person. Like Bernie Tiede, Gary Johnson was the subject of a Texas Monthly longform feature by Skip Hollandsworth, and Linklater’s note-perfect comedy-thriller is based on his real life — sort of.

Billing itself as a “somewhat true story” in its opening text (and clarifying its embellishments at the end), Hit Man adapts the aforementioned profile piece — a riveting read that calls him “the Laurence Olivier” of his field — but it imagines a more detailed inner life for the elusive faux-contract killer and, more importantly, concocts an absurd series of events on par with the Coen brothers’ Fargo. While it begins with a bog-standard, fish-out-of-water premise, it soon spirals into an enormously funny, multilayered film about romance, passion, identity, and the way love and lust warp people’s perspective, driving them to do crazy things. At times, it’s a comedic high-wire act, with scenes so simultaneously hilarious and tightly wound that its Venice Film Festival press screening was rife with regular applause breaks. Rightly so: It’s nothing short of a perfect crowd-pleaser, with another star-making turn from Powell, who’s as ridiculous and silly in the movie as he is charming and debonair.

While it initially seems like Powell is over-qualified for the part— Hollywood’s knack for casting model-pretty actors as self-effacing everymen is well-known; it was even a meta-joke in Barbie — it soon becomes clear what kind of comedic and dramatic chops the role requires (not to mention charisma). As the movie’s co-writer, Powell knows the character inside out, so when Gary is introduced to us via voiceover, he knows just how to modulate his voice. It’s slightly overzealous, though not too overbearing; it has a bubbliness to it, but without sounding naïve. Despite his occasional idiosyncrasies, like his affinity for regaling disinterested coworkers with stories about birdwatching, Gary is the most “regular” regular guy on his covert police squad, led by the grimy, lanky Jasper (Austin Amelio), a dirty cop who’s just been suspended for excessive force. Jasper was also the squad’s undercover hitman, and in his sudden absence, the insecure, jorts-wearing Gary is thrown into the field, forced to trade in his wire-frame glasses for a wire when he sits down with a prospective client looking to bump off an enemy. However, beyond all expectations, he’s a perfect fit, embodying a commanding ruthlessness while guiding his suspects to incriminating statements in increasingly strange and disturbing ways — in character, of course.

It’s a comedic wallop of an inciting incident, thrilling and airtight, and it quickly leads to Gary becoming a rising star at this particular (and peculiar) job. Soon, he begins concocting numerous aliases with their own distinct costumes, nationalities, and backstories, which he tailors to each individual client looking to have their rival or significant other killed, making his preparation akin to something like crafting a dating profile, and turning each meeting into a unique, absurd seduction. However, the metaphor soon collides with itself when Gary is smitten with a troubled client, Madison (Adria Arjona), who seems desperate to get out of a bad situation. You can see the writing on the wall from miles away, even if you can’t fully decipher it — but on some level, you’re hoping the characters will give in to their most misguided instincts just to see what happens. Gary beginning an affair with a suspect is a bad idea, made all the more complicated by the fact that he continues to conceal his real identity behind the guise of a suave hitman, Ron. This character starts to take on a life of his own, and before long, Gary’s seduction becomes a self-seduction of sorts, as he grows more tempted to fully step into Ron’s shoes and live Ron’s life, leading to a multi-layered labyrinth of splendidly awkward situations and escalating possibilities.