Seen the Hit Man movie reviews lately? This 2023 Richard Linklater movie, credited with launching Glen Powell’s career, somehow got a giant “Get Out of Jail Free” pass for some mysterious reason, and no one seems to be paying attention. This amusing but flawed and ethically challenged movie is rated 95% on Rotten Tomatoes (89% user reviews) when I fully expected it to get carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey.
I actually saw Hit Man in a sneak preview and it stuck in my craw then, too. The producers were there gathering feedback and most of it was the usual “glad I got to see a free movie” comments, complimenting the cast, drooling over Powell’s good looks, or praising the comic sequences.
Oh wait, time for the Hit Man movie review summary: Powell plays Gary, an unassuming professor and part-time schlub who runs tech for New Orleans Police sting investigations. He ends up showing a flair for playing wide variety of hit men in stings, suckering would-be clients into incriminating themselves for murder, affecting a passel of different accents and costuming up to meet client expectations and wow them with his “authenticity.” This section of the movie was good retro fun, filmed in bright saturated colors with an amiable aw-shucks charm. Then it takes a turn. Gary meets an unhappy wife, Madison, who wants to kill her abusive hubby; he starts a sexual relationship with her under these pretenses; and then Madison kills the husband, who was unconscious at the time.
Okay? Okay! The Hit Man movie just got real. Or did it?
Gary admits he isn’t really a hit man. Cue the typical rom-com breakup… you’ve been lying to me all along… well, you shot your husband in the heart and are on the run from the cops… didn’t Meg Ryan blast an unconscious ex’s face off with a shotgun in When Harry Met Sally? Or was that Bridget Jones?
Then the cops start to pressure Gary to close the trap on Madison, who they suspect in the murder. He goes to her house with a wire and manages to de-incriminate her while proving his love for her. Cute rom-com, right? No, we’re not done yet. One of the other cops shows up at Madison’s to blackmail her for the murder. Cue the typical rom-com reunion: Madison drugs the cop and Gary suffocates the sleeping man with a plastic bag and stages it like a suicide, just like Billy Crystal did to Sally’s ex in… wait, maybe that was Love Actually? Cue credits! Kids and happily ever after!
Note the skeevy nature of both murders. One, a sleeping spouse. The other, a drugged coworker, strangled in a black plastic shroud. Both victims healthy, non-threatening, inactive, mute… helpless.
In short, the Hit Man movie is one of the weirdest review oddities in modern cinema, imho. Raves online; bought by Netflix; a top pick in streaming for a bit. And tonally jarring, ethically challenged, and disturbing. Should it bother me that reviewers are so eager to embrace a light-hearted meet-cute movie about two disloyal people who kill unarmed victims without the slightest remorse or hesitancy? They killed “bad people,” but who made them judge jury executioner?
I’d love to see a sequel staged as a dark psychological thriller in which these two murderers, who knew their victims well, engage in a vicious battle of wills, scrying for clues about the other’s fidelity, guilt-ridden and haunted by ghosts. They know that loyalty and trust are by definition foreign concepts in their relationship, so they strive to determine if the other is planning to betray them to the police or open yet another grave. At the same time they’re both killing other “bad people” they come across in their lives: the grandmother who’s making her run for school board difficult, or the tween who has been bullying their daughter at softball practice. With some hilarious dress-up sessions with would-be murderers and other assorted felons.
Just like in Crazy Stupid Love!
