HIT MAN (2024) – Romantic black comedy that missed its target

Glen Powell who is currently widely touted by the entertainment industry as the next big Hollywood heartthrob superstar. Little wonder as he seems to be in a lot of reasonably high-profile movies of late. He was with Sydney Sweeney in the hit romantic comedy “Anyone But You” and will be soon seen in a disaster movie “Twisters”. Here he takes on the leading role as Gary Johnson, a mild-mannered university professor who also works part-time as an undercover cop with police! He aided the police in gaining evidence on people looking to hire a contract killer by impersonating a hired killer while being wired to record discriminating evidence against the killer’s hirer. I won’t blame you for dismissing this absurd plot as nonsense, but there really is a Gary Johnson who poses as a hired killer for the police station! This gave the film makers to proudly proclaim Hit Man to be inspired by a real story while adding on a lot of fictitious stuff including murders to spice things up.

Hit Man is directed by Richard Linklater who was responsible for the excellent 2014 coming of age movie “Boyhood” and the much loved “Before” series of movies (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight). Unfortunately, despite having such an illustrious track record, Linklater seem to have lost his touch. Hit Man comes across as standard Hollywood fodder. It fails as a comedy because it just isn’t funny. The exchange of smart alec remarks between characters felt forced and humdrum. It also fails as a romantic comedy as it isn’t very romantic either despite the attempts to exploit the two main stars by having them appear half naked in some concocted sex scenes. Our main star, Glen has a lot of screen time, but his good looks and charms alone are not enough to lift the movie above the mundane. The scenes where he appears in various versions of hit man getups had the potential of providing some serious goof ball fun while giving Glen the opportunity to show off his versatility in acting skills. Alas these came across like they were in a rush and with minimum comic effect. The character of Gary Johnson is actually quite complex and the movie has a pretty serious underlying theme about discovering your own identity and taking steps to transform into the person you want to be. These are buried under conventional dialouge and light humour.

At the end, Hit Man is just passable entertainment without offering anything new to the genre. The final act was its strongest as it dares to take the plot to a direction that is unpredictable. Viewers expecting a squeaky-clean ending that plays in the same innocuous tone in the preceding, will be surprised by the change in tone. If only the entire movie was this bold and darker.