Hacking Cinema #12: Hit Man Hit Piece
Are we having fun yet????
What I love the most about movies is their ability to surprise me, even after twenty plus years of watching them and thinking about them. This past month, I was surprised by Hit Man, Richard Linklater’s direct-to-Netflix release co-written by and starring Glenn Powell. I did not expect it to be my least favorite film of the year and possibly the decade, but here we are!
I planned on including my thoughts on Hit Man in a round-up post, but my dislike of it is actually so profound that I thought it might warrant therapy some further discussion in a dedicated post. If I include a normally unwarranted amount of plot spoilers, it’s because I do not want you to see this movie if you haven’t already.
I hate to be the one to break this to you, but we’re all victims of a psychological operation, or psyop. I believe that there was a concerted marketing effort to create an illusory aura of “good movie” around this very bad movie. Critics and consumers alike fell for it. This mass hysteria was aided and abetted by the type of film bros who talk about movies as though they were competitive sports. There are a few key words and phrases to look for when identifying a psyop of this nature:
“It’s so much fun!”
“It’s a delight!”
These words convey a nebulously positive vibe, but do not say anything specifically positive about the film. You also might hear something like the below:
“Glenn Powell is a star!”
“Glenn Powell’s chemistry with Adria Arjona is electric!”
I fear we’re experiencing a similar psyop around Glenn Powell’s career more generally. Everyone keeps screaming at me about this person’s star power, but I haven’t yet seen him in anything that isn’t either embarrassing or military propaganda. Arguably this is a matter of taste, but even if Mr. Powell’s barely-different-from-Ryan-Reynolds schtick works for you, I don’t think you can honestly say that he isn’t shoehorned into this particular role in a way that strains credulity.
In Hit Man, Mr. Powell plays Gary Johnson, a college philosophy professor with kind of greasy hair and wire-framed glasses, who lives alone with his cat and has a hard time with dating post-divorce. Upon being introduced to this characterization, I wanted to ask the movie the following question: hey, do you think I’m stupid? Some leading men can pull off transformational performances like this1, but let’s please not kid ourselves about Mr. Powell.
Gary stumbles into a side gig as a fake hit man for police sting operations because he’s preternaturally talented at acting in addition to looking like Glenn Powell. Gary teams up with a lovable group of misfits (Retta, Sanjay Rao, Austin Amelio) who are just doing the honest everyday work of ensnaring vulnerable people into agreeing to break the law and then arresting them. Fun!
The movie spends an inordinate amount of time showing Gary playing increasingly zany versions of a hit man, customized to the target of the sting. This plot-agnostic sequence seeks to make us understand that Mr. Powell can do comedy in a number of ways, but NEVER in a way that compromises his core competency as a performer, which is being muscular and handsome. Many reviewers have made excuses for this part of the film by describing it as “funny”, but I did not laugh.
The actual story doesn’t start until thirty minutes in. On this note, let me get on my structure soapbox for one second. Structure is not about dictating the content or pacing of a story. It is about making sure that a story actually happens on the screen in a timely fashion. Structure prevents boredom. Unless you find a half hour of no story to be “Fun!”, the front half of Hit Man is almost unbearably boring. Because I was sitting on my couch, I had to fight the urge to get up and do something else.
The story starts like this: on one of his stings, Gary meets Madison (Adria Arjonia), a young woman looking to eliminate her abusive husband. They hit it off in a dorky and genuine meet-cute manner: Madison connects to Gary’s real self when it peeks through his performance of “Rod”, the cool-guy hit man persona for this particular job. Or at least that is the impression I got from the scene. Gary instead concludes that what this abused woman wants is a man who can and does kill people, i.e. Rod, and subsequent scenes seem to agree.
Gary calls off the sting and strikes up a relationship with Madison, remaining in character as Rod. Gary has to hide Madison from his co-workers, because fraternizing with the targets of police entrapment is WRONG. The pair start secretly hooking up in what appears to be an AirBnB. This is where much of the “chemistry” and “sexiness” happens, according to many people.
I am sure that Ms. Arjona is a talented actress, but what the script provides for her is a character that oscillates between being powerless and casually bloodthirsty with no logical progression or motivation, summing up to one of the more insulting portrayals of a woman in my recent memory.
The back half of the runtime (again, there is no structure) meanders into a Bonnie and Clyde situation where Gary has to cover for Madison when she actually kills her ex husband. This culminates in an ending that very clearly states that killing someone is fine if it makes you happy. Hit Man is a rare film that is both pro-cop and pro-murder, which is kind of impressive when you think about it.
I would request that you do not “it’s-not-that-deep” me on this one. This movie begins and ends with literal philosophy lectures. Hit Man gestures towards saying something about the malleability of identity and the grey areas of morality, but does so with the laziest possible writing and directing, hoping that Mr. Powell’s winning smile will distract you for long enough that you won’t care.
One of the movie’s poorly executed running gags involves the signal phrase “all pie is good pie”. This line was apparently lifted directly from the true story2 that inspired Hit Man, but to me it is emblematic of the film’s attitude towards itself and its audience. Netflix would like us to accept that all content is good content, and that all Glenn Powell is good Glenn Powell, but I don’t agree. We actually deserve a really excellent pie.
If you want to see a movie with a nuanced take on murder, please watch Anatomy of a Fall (2023). It’s way funnier than this. If you want to see a sexy action comedy with two super hot people, watch Out of Sight (1998). Jennifer Lopez’ performance will blow you away.
Another symptom of the Hit Man psyop is film bros bemoaning the fact that the movie didn’t get a wide theatrical release, because a movie as “fun” as this was “meant to be seen in a movie theater!”. In general, my ethics dictate that all movies by definition deserve to be seen in a movie theater, but I may need to start making exceptions if films made by streaming companies continue to look this oppressively characterless regardless of the talent in the directing chair. At this point, it might make more sense to just say that any movie made for Netflix is directed by Netflix.
Sensing my anger, Hollywood execs put their heads together and came up with a plan to get Hacking Cinema back on board with Mr. Powell’s campaign for Movie Stardom: Twisters was shot on film.
Unfortunately, this worked. I will be seeing Twisters this weekend, but my vigilance with regards to the Glenn Powell psyop remains unshaken. Keep your heads on a swivel, hackers.
More support for my theory that if a true story COULD be a documentary, it SHOULD NOT be a movie.
Living for the Glenn Powell hate, I have no idea what Hollywood sees in this guy