Early on in Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, Gary Johnson (played by Glen Powell, who cowrote the film with Linklater) informs us that in real life, hit men don’t exist—who would even consider killing people as a job and risk years in jail, or worse?
Incidentally, there is a chance that Hit Man itself won’t truly exist either: Netflix bought the film’s distribution rights at the Toronto International Film Festival following its premiere in Venice in September 2023, and after holding on to it while a peak movie season passed by, will release it on its platform on June 7 (after showing it “in select theaters” on May 24). It’s a crowd-pleasing, clever, sexy comedy, made by the man behind Dazed and Confused, School of Rock, and Boyhood, starring one of Hollywood’s few rising stars. Although very original, it also seems built in a lab to make a lot of money at the box office. Instead, it’ll gasp for air as Netflix’s flavor of the week.
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It isn’t new for streamers to acquire critically acclaimed films and release them unceremoniously. Netflix bought the rights to Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (and its sequel) in 2021 and released it for one weekend in November 2022, potentially leaving $300 million of box office returns on the table. More recently, Doug Liman expressed bitterness over the fact that Amazon MGM wouldn’t give a theatrical release to his Road House remake. After the exceptional year that theaters had in 2023, with both Oppenheimer and Barbie bringing in spectators (often for repeat viewings), as well as the continuing success of Dune: Part Two in the past month, the economic incentive for releasing a mainstream film in theaters seemed evident. (Need another example? Try the box office success of Anyone but You, a romantic comedy starring none other than Glen Powell.) But Hit Man might be the biggest casualty of the streaming takeover to date. Beyond being a real return to form for Linklater, as well as yet another impressive display of talent for Powell, the very fabric of the film calls for a shared big-screen experience, the focus granted by the darkness, and perhaps even some popcorn.
From the get-go, Gary commands our attention with his voice-over narration. He’s a philosophy teacher leading a normal, safe life. He talks to his rather uninterested students about identity and the real and comes across as simply a happy geek, until the reveal that he also helps out his local police department by playing a fake killer for hire to entrap people for attempted murder. This is when the film starts challenging our expectations by denying the existence of the titular figure—ceci n’est pas un hit man. This very simple metatextual play on myth and fantasy sets the tone: Invited to question all appearances, we’re forced to stay on our toes. Where could this film about a non–hit man go next?
The answer is at first simple: good jokes. Powell gets to flex his acting muscles (and his real muscles, which are way too big for a “normal guy,” but that’s fine) in a montage of all the iterations of his hit-man act. Each is adapted to the personality and, once again, fantasies of the desperate or deranged individuals seeking his services. Adopting different accents, haircuts, outfits, postures, and attitudes, Powell plunges into caricature headfirst, which doesn’t make his customers suspicious: After all, he matches what they’ve seen both on TV and in their wildest, most vengeful dreams.
It doesn’t take a philosophy professor to know that humor is better enjoyed in groups: the more the merrier truly applies in comedy, all the more so when a deceptive main character allows the audience to be part of the joke. In Hit Man, we get to notice how ridiculous Powell’s Tilda Swinton–like ice-cold killer—actually reminiscent of the actress’s turn in David Fincher’s hit man movie The Killer—is, with his red wig and sharp cheekbones, while his client is intimidated by how much truer than fiction his subcontractor is. This montage is funny in itself, but much better appreciated in a movie theater, with everyone united, basking in how much fun Powell is clearly having and in the connection we have formed with Gary.
Another feeling that cinemas have allowed us to share together in the dark, in the comfort of our anonymity, is, of course, titillation. Hit Man turns into a sexy time when Gary, undercover, meets a new potential customer in Maddy (Adria Arjona), a desperate and strikingly beautiful woman who seems more reasonable than most of his clientele. Romance grows naturally between them, with Gary adopting the persona of the perfect, hot gentleman—Maddy’s type, but also a lot of people’s, frankly—and dissuading her from doing something she might regret. Their mutual attraction breaks through the polite personas they both put on and through Gary’s act, as Powell and Arjona share the kind of chemistry that would make even Descartes forget all about reason. Their flirtation is all the more exciting since it revolves around their desire to get to know each other better—precisely the thing that Gary can’t allow, but struggles to resist. Linklater lingers on the intense moments they share, capturing the details of their attraction to leave no doubt that it is authentic. From Basic Instinct to Out of Sight, or even The Holiday, watching such moments in a theater is, to a large extent, what cinema is all about: voyeurism, identification, fantasy, and excitement, with people around you going through the same sensations, everyone holding their breath so as not to break the spell. You simply can’t experience this kind of thrill alone in front of your TV.
As Gary embraces his new persona and finds his life enriched, we start rooting for the image of the perfect power couple he and Maddy project. Gary gets carried away by his own fantasies, and the film’s exploration of identity gains depth. Can you become who you wish you were through belief alone? Are we all just playing the parts that we think we have the ability to play? Can our id run the show, leaving our ego behind? If Hit Man begins by asking us not to suspend our disbelief, it eventually convinces us that anything is possible, if you want it enough.
But Linklater and Powell have more tricks up their sleeves. Throughout the film, the audience is repeatedly led to believe it knows the full picture, only to discover that we’ve been fooled. This engaging back-and-forth between confiding in the spectator and then tricking them plays out in Linklater’s clever and playful mise-en-scène, pushing spectators to interact with the film in unexpected ways that require close and active attention, creating a delightfully tense atmosphere in a packed theater. (The audience at my screening erupted into applause several times.) Both lead actors are more than up to the task, bringing a slapstick quality to their sexual chemistry that makes it somehow even more appealing.
As it continually strengthens its grasp on the audience, Hit Man keeps deepening and complicating its look at identity and love (if you love a pretender, who exactly do you love?) and reaches unexpected conclusions that are better left undisclosed here. The existential questioning at its core both requires and goes hand in hand with a particular kind of dynamic spectatorship: In turns entrusted with secrets and betrayed, the spectator has no firm grasp on the events unfolding before them. Of course, this sort of mechanism functions much more powerfully in a movie theater, where we collectively embark on a shared experience, willfully taking the projected images as reality. And in Hit Man’s cave, Gary the philosopher asks us to question these shadows on the wall, and to turn our heads to the light making them appear. After all, don’t we call them movie stars because they shine so bright? I’d say that Powell’s tour de force performance (or performances) will cement his place in Hollywood as a bona fide idol, but that’s much harder to guarantee given the scattered, individualized viewing experience that a platform like Netflix encourages.
If you miss its short run in cinemas, you’ll have to watch Hit Man from your own little cave, alongside maybe a person or two, with a remote that’ll let you hit pause and snap out of the delightfully concocted fantasy set before you, the shadows on the wall losing their power over your imagination each time. Hit Man perfectly demonstrates that the endless protest of the death of the movie star should instead be a rallying cry for the traditional theatrical release. We deserve to see our fantasies built up, and they deserve—perhaps even need—a true audience, captive and communal.
Manuela Lazic is a French writer based in London who primarily covers film.