Glen Powell in Richard Linklater's HIT MAN (2024)

 "Seize the identity you want for yourself!"

This decade's best sorta con man comedy romance movie? Holy shit, Richard Linklater and Glen Powell knocked it out of the park. Classic Hollywood Film Noir entertainment.

OK, now that I've had a few minutes and a ride home from the theater to think about it more (and it's quite the date movie so glad I could make it that kind of night with my better half as well), the total joy in Richard Linklater's filmmaking is that, on some level, he knows he's not reinventing the wheel.

Despite the title, this is less about how professional Killers operate - though how this whole act of someone being hired to kill someone is not of disinterest to the main Gary of this story (Powell), on the contrary he takes a very active philosophical interest as he subsumes into the Characters he's creating as this undercover cop suckering in people in entrapment - than it is a Con Man comedy romance where one is involved with another who doesn't fully know who they are... but hey, sparks are gonna spark and fly off the fucking register, anyway!

This is all to say that Linklater understands that the idea baked into this where a romance develops between someone who is not saying who they say they are isn't new. But what he brings to the material is fresh and exciting and charged with humor and a constant wink about what is happening between Gary/Ron and Madison (Arjona, more on her in a bit), as especially his star and co writer Powell gets how the meat is seeing this couple gain and gain in chemistry. And whoa am I impressed to say this man knows how to craft dialog, especially as Powell understands as an actor he is playing an actor reveling and often fascinated by the act of his performance at times (as, as happens, Gary the meek professor and Ron the Hitman merge and become this Super Attractive Man).

What Linklater understands in the conventions of film noir is one thing, but what he brings to it is this sense of, I won't say lightness, but the movie almost feels like it's often in the POV of this character of Gary cum Ron, and it's this outlook on life that is not the sort of jaded or cynical look at the world like one sees sometimes from modern Neo Noir. And if anything this is, the conceit of the philosophy and psychology professor thing included, the film successfully and playfully wrestles with the ideas it presents, about how one can manage or, really, totally bungle up in a pretzel twist of logic and emotion things with Superego and Ego and Id (the cats being named that... perfect sight gag).

Hit Man is the kind of seeming to be breezy and light entertainment that is never so easy to pull off. This is work from the actors and the direction and writing that takes a level of intelligence and sophistication, and more than anything I'm in awe of the control of tone here. For much of the film, especially when we see Gary/Ron in his disguises that get increasingly flamboyant and ridiculous (his Russian gangster character looks like Crispin Glover, you can't unsee it now can you), it is a comedy with some small shades of dealing with more serious ideas, or of course the fact that Madison has freedom an abusive relationship - or of course Austin Amelio as the sleazebag Jasper, another great trope that Amelio still reinvigorates because he's just as compelling in the role and believable as the leads (I totally forgot he was also in Everybody Wants Some! And... he sure looked familiar, ho ho).

But once the film has to change gears and dig more into the darker and more consequential stakes, for Madison, for Gary, for the (not quite) ex husband who Madison wanted killed in the first place and boy that sure will come back to bite Gary on the rear for much of the final third of this, Linklater and Powell make that as seamless and believable as the rest of the film before it.

Part of that is because there is this ideological spine that the filmmakers explore cleverly and (to use a word Gary hears thrown at him as a criticism of his line of work, though there in thr the lack-of sense) with empathy, so you understand like in any of the great Con-Man stories (ie Paper Moon just randomly comes to mind but there's others I'm sure) that ones identity and how one plays with it can be very easily twisted and used upon that person. I'm not kidding when I say I think this has as much on its mind, in its sneaky hidden way, as Waking Life.

Remarkably, it doesn't forget that it should still be funny and enjoyable as the tension and suspense is at its I'm-crushing-my-partner's-hand-now heights of intensity (or for superb supporting people like Retta and Sanjay Rao have their moments too), as the character that's been developed with Gary (and that Gary has created and can't stop called Ron) pays off so swingingly. 

In other words, you know the movie has to build to this construct that's been set up, but you not only don't care you want the movie to work itself on you because of how much love there is for this couple (yes, even including how Madison is... a stone cold Femme Fatale! Kind of!? Yeah!)

Above all, this is Powell - and to another extent Arjona (glad she got this after Morbius, goodnesd) - saying to Hollywood, "yeah, not only do I know that I'm this charismatic, I am at the point I can practically make fun of how charismatic I am and even subvert it!" It's a titanic star vehicle, and they both mine every second they can as a performers. I feel like Pauline Kael when it was said she would go "ooh" and "ahh" audibly in her seat when being wildly entertained by a picture. 

This Linklater.... knows what he's doing here, and it's his best work as a filmmaker in... maybe a decade?