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Director Richard Linklater first cast Glenn Powell in a film in 2006, playing a small role in fast food nation. And more recently in Linklater's 2022 film Apollo 10 and a half. That same year, Powell made another movie, appearing opposite Tom Cruise in Top Gun Maverick. And suddenly Glenn Powell became a movie star. Last year he made a romantic comedy, Anyone But You with Sidney Sweeney, that like Top Gun Maverick was a major box office hit. And now he's the star of a new movie he co-wrote with Richard Linklater, who also directs. It's called Hitman. And after opening recently in limited theatrical release, it comes to Netflix on Friday. Our TV critic David Bienkule has this review.
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Hitman is based on an article in Texas Monthly, written by Skip Hollensworth, which told of a very improbable true story. Mild mannered philosophy teacher Gary Johnson was enough of a tech geek to earn money in his spare time working with local police to set up recording and listening devices for their sting operations. One day, while in the audio surveillance truck, Gary was called into action to fill in for an undercover cop and asked to pretend to be a hitman for hire. And just like that, Gary's life changed, drastically. The movie Hitman is co-written by Glenn Powell, who stars as Gary, and Richard Linklater, who also directs, working with Powell for the fourth time. They give each other the freedom to have lots of fun, and it's infectious. Powell, whose Gary conjures up several different hitman alter egos, attacks his roles like Peter Sellers playing various parts in Dr. Strangelove. And Linklater, as director, gets to dive headfirst into action scenes and love scenes that aren't exactly the first thing that comes to mind from the director of boyhood, school of rock, and dazed and confused. After a first half that sticks pretty close to actual events, the rest of Hitman springboards into imagined fantasy, making it as this movie announces at the beginning a somewhat true story. But go with it. At the start, Powell's Gary Johnson is like Walter White in Breaking Bad. Lecturing to students in his New Orleans classroom, who are barely attentive, and, like him, completely unaware that the lecture he's giving is about to describe his own life path. So what does Nietzsche mean when he says, the secret for harvesting from existence, the greatest fruitfulness, the greatest enjoyment is to live dangerously. Build your cities on the slopes of Asuvius, send your ships into uncharted seas, live at war with your peers and yourselves.
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What is he getting at here? Anybody? Sylvia?
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It sounds like he's saying you have to put yourself out there.
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have to take risks and get out of your comfort zone because life is short. You have to live passionately and
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on your own terms.
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Well, I have a three-word response to that. Ab so lutely. Gary is a divorced man who lives alone, drives a Honda Civic, and doesn't eat his own breakfast until after he's fed his pets and watered his plants. But once Gary is drafted into meeting a man who's there to hire someone he thinks is a contract killer, Gary takes the assignment and the role very seriously. And while his police colleagues listen from the van, and Gary gives himself an internal pep talk, his transformation into a hired killer takes hold of his own son. And he's called instantly.
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So, uh, how long
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have you been doing this?
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That's none of your f*** business.
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Look at Gary! You called
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me to New York.
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The man is a natural.
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I ain't some offense here.
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You don't know me. I don't know you. At some point in the future, that's gonna be a good thing. We're not gonna be friends. You got it? Got it. Breathe.
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Think hit me, I
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thoughts. So, so. You're assessing me. Am I the right guy to eliminate your problem? And just so you know, I'm assessing you too. And Gary is off, approaching
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each assignment like it's the leading role in the school play. Going all method with elaborate disguises, accents, and even imaginary backstories. As Gary sees it, his job is to become each Sting target's ideal version of a hitman in order to seal the deal. And each target has a different vision. But eventually, one potential Sting target throws him. A woman named Madison who wants him to kill her abusive husband. While she's falling for his act, he's falling for her. Falling in love. And turning hitman into a very twisted type of rom-com. And it works so well in part because of Andrea Arjona, who plays Madison, and currently plays Bix on the Star Wars TV series Andor. When she played Laurie, the star's ex-lover in the TV miniseries Irma Vep, she lit up every scene and demanded and deserved attention. I know that's a fairly obscure reference, but she does it here too. And there's also solid support by two of the co-stars playing cops on Gary's Sting operation. Austin Emilio, who played Dwight on The Walking Dead, and Retta, who played Donna on Parks and Recreation. Overall, the performances are strong, the writing is shrewd, and the tone is light and funny, yet occasionally sexy or suspenseful. Don't expect a faithful retelling of Gary Johnson's life story. But do expect to sit back and enjoy some of the imagined possibilities.