Netflix’s ‘Hit Man’ Sure Looks Like It’s Going To Be A Summer Hit, Man

“It’s a Vitamix of different genres, and it isn’t just romance, I think we’re Richard Linklater’s first sex scene!” So boasted Glen Powell to a beaming, packed crowd in New York City on Wednesday night. 

The calendar may read mid-April, but at Manhattan’s stylish Whitby Hotel last night you’d think it was the thick of Oscar season. Netflix hosted an industry screening of their soon-to-launch crowd pleaser Hit Man, and the evening absolutely had a “for your consideration” vibe to it. As it should: the movie, co-written by its star Glen Powell, is a real winner—smart, funny, sexy, surprising, and bursting with outstanding performances. Its director, Richard Linklater, has been serving up genre-defiant movies for nearly 35 years, and this is among his very best.

While your roving reporter spotted several notables in the crowd (Oscar-winner F. Murray Abraham, writer-director Paul Schrader, Daisy Jones & the Six’s Will Harrison, and others) the event was hosted by Emmy-winner (and future Lois Lane) Rachel Brosnahan. This seemed, at first, kinda weird, as the poised and lovable actress isn’t known for any Netflix projects, and she also mentioned she’d only met the night’s big draw—Glen Powell—a few days earlier. It didn’t matter, though, because she was a splendid and thoughtful panel moderator, which is often not always the case when celebs—even celebs you love—lead a post-screening Q&A. 

The movie killed in the room, as it did when I saw it at the Toronto International Film Festival last autumn. Hit Man is one that grows with repeat viewings, as Powell and Linklater’s screenplay is rich with foreshadowing and meta-commentary that can zip past you the first time. To briefly summarize: the New Orleans-based film is based on a real person, the late Gary Johnson, who would pretend to be a hit man while wearing a wire, thus aiding the police in getting a potentially murderous someone off the streets. 

Hit Man makes some adjustments to the real life story. The movie follows an arc from a kind-but-detached college professor who is too busy analyzing life to having one of his own into a passionate alpha male that is a social magnet and wooer of beautiful women (specifically Adria Arjona who will ensure that sexy stewardess costumes fly off the shelves this Halloween.). A series of Preston Sturges-like complications ensue, leading to a darkly comic conclusion.  

The project evolved during the pandemic. Producer Michael Costigan pointed Powell in the direction of a lengthy Texas Monthly piece about Gary Johnson, and they both realized there was a movie there. Powell, an Austin native, has been in Rick Linklater’s orbit for a while (he worked with him at age 14 opposite Paul Dano in Fast Food Nation, was one of the central characters in Everybody Wants Some!!, and had a small part in Apollo 10 ½), and he immediately felt the project could work for the elastically-styled director. (That the article’s author also wrote what became Linklater’s 2011 film Bernie probably didn’t hurt either.) 

The two developed the film, and the process mirrored the yin-and-yang of the character. The college professor Gary is rife with, as Powell put it, “Rickness,” meaning a footnote-laden way of speaking and an observational attitude to life. (Earlier he devised a nickname for the man: Rickipedia, as he is a wellspring of knowledge.) The character Gary plays, Ron, is a bit more of a slick, fun-lovin’ guy, and while Glen didn’t come out and say this, the go-getter who lights up the room is probably a little like the man who recently appeared opposite Sydney Sweeney in the box office smash Anyone But You. 

Powell and Brosnahan talked about the others in the cast, like the spectacular Adria Arjona, who has to drive the primary character’s move from the left brain to his right brain. “The heavens opened up,” when she came in for the “Swiss army knife” role, he said. 

“Even when she’s doing despicable things, you have to root for her, and Adria just adds humanity to it,” he added. 

He also shouted-out Retta, who kills it in every scene, as well as Austin Emilio, an Everybody Wants Some!! alum whose part was written with him in mind. Powell joked that the scuzzy (and razor thin) cop portrayal earned him the nickname “Meth-hew McConaughey.” He also told the story of how a small (but pivotal) part went to one of his longtime best friends (Evan Holtzman), but both of them wanted him to win the role fair-and-square, so they hid their relationship from Linklater and the other producers. 

The two pretended they had never met during the audition (a deception not dissimilar to what happens all throughout Hit Man) and Holtzman “crushed it” on his own. Only later did Powell reveal that they were buds.

And that wasn’t the only time Powell would surprise Linklater. There’s a juicy montage or two of Gary Johnson trying out different personas as “in-character” hit men, and due to scheduling this mid-budget film, there wasn’t time to present them all to the director. Some of Gary’s zany identities only came out the day of filming. He knew he got it right one day when he was chatting with the director in full makeup and wardrobe, but Linklater paused to ask if anyone knew where Glen was. (This sounds far-fetched, but Powell said it was true.) 

The evening concluded with the serving of pie—several different varieties. (I chose blueberry.) Why there was pie is something that will become clear to you when you catch Hit Man in theaters May 17 and on Netflix on June 7. 

Jordan Hoffman is a writer and critic in New York City. His work also appears in Vanity Fair, The Guardian, and the Times of Israel. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, and tweets at @JHoffman about Phish and Star Trek.