Batting Average Near Zero (Just a Couple of Hits) But Effective Anyway
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, though better options may be on the horizon. (Note: Anything in bold blue [some may look near purple] is a link to something more in the review.)
My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the song’s name)
Hit Man (Richard Linklater) rated R 115 min.
Here’s the trailer:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size;
activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
What Happens: Gary Johnson (Glen Powell) teaches philosophy and psychology at the U. of New Orleans but also works with the local police in helping cop Jasper (Austin Amelio) set up stings on people who are looking for a hit man to kill someone; however, due to some Jasper indiscretions he’s put on a 120-day suspension, so Gary’s recruited to play the fake killer who will secretly get the request by the intended-clients on the record—further incriminating themselves by giving Gary payment for the hit—who will then be quickly arrested by cops Claudette (Retta) and Phil (Sanjay Rao), who are waiting in a nearby van, recording the “client’s” clandestine-confession. Despite initial nervousness, Gary proves quite adept at this alternate-persona-scam where he uses fake names, disguises, sometimes accents, and just enough cold-blooded-attitude to convince these would-be-murder-employers that he’s actually who they come to believe he is, enhanced by his background research into these “clients,” better gaining an understanding of what type of killer they’re likely looking for. A quick comedic montage of Gary’s first crop of arrests always ends up with the perp (male or female) in front of a police-booking height chart (reminding me of H.I. McDunnough’s [Nicholas Cage] frequent arrests in Raising Arizona [Joel and Ethan Coen, 1987]), but then the plot shifts into romantic-complication-territory when an attractive, sexy woman, Madison (Adria Arjona), meets Gary (now as “Ron”) to arrange to have her abusive husband, Ray (Evan Holtzman), killed.
Rather than seeing her arrested, though, Ron encourages Maddy to simply leave the guy, a choice that doesn’t go well with his arrest team—which now includes reinstated Jasper, who’s angry at not getting his old assignment back, due to their superior feeling Gary’s being more successful as the fake hit man. As Ron, Gary—a lonely guy with a trying-to-be-simpathetic ex-wife, Alicia (Molly Bernard), in his real life—starts seeing Madison for romance/passionate sex (she also tells him she owns a gun so he tells her how to use it effectively if she ever needs to defend herself); one night after clubbing, though, they run into Ray, who’s about to attack Ron until he pulls a gun, encouraging Ray to simply back off. However, another complication comes that night when they’re seen by Jasper who senses Gary’s going down a bad road, although he plays along with the Ron persona.
Further complications arise when Ray makes a contact for a hit man to kill his ex-wife, maybe her boyfriend too, with Gary meeting him at the usual diner (the situation came up too fast for the police team to get any background on the perp, calling himself “Mike”) so Gary recognizes him, sits behind him in the next booth to avoid face-to-face-recognition, but that fell apart when they got up to leave, so Ray/Mike calls off the hit, exits quickly, says he’ll kill her himself. Gary/Ron tries to get Madison to move out of her house, but she refuses to believe Ray would actually kill her despite his deep anger.
The next complication (of course there are more) comes when Ray’s suddenly killed, with plenty of circumstantial clues pointing to Madison as the perp. ⇒“Ron” goes to meet with her, she confesses to the murder, he confesses to be Gary, afraid she’d prefer “Ron” to the actual Gary. The cop team then want Gary, as Ron, to confront Madison (he doesn’t tell them about the dual-confessions), so he does, wearing a wire as usual, but when he gets into her house he shows her “script” prompts on his phone while they talk, so she vehemently denies murdering Ray, which ultimately the police team believes. However, that night when he comes back he finds Jasper there, demanding to get the life insurance cash Ray recently took out (one of the items that made Madison a suspect in his death) to buy his silence. They talk a bit over beers, but Jasper suddenly passes out (Madison spiked his drink), with Gary suddenly deciding to finish him off by putting a plastic bag over his head so he’ll suffocate, then be driven to some out-of-the-way spot where his death will seem to be by suicide. Our story then closes, jumping ahead a few years where we find Gary and Madison happily married with 2 young kids, a boy and a girl. Still teaching (and seeming to still be working with the police), Gary now sees the universe isn’t fixed, situations can change, just as people can change which refutes his previous beliefs in rigid-determinism, so that he’s found a new focus for his interest in “human consciousness and behavior,” along with how well anyone can really know their true self.⇐
So What? I’ve been a Linklater fan since his debut with Slacker (1990)—partly because it’s based in Austin, TX where I lived for many years, partly because it put into practice an idea I’d had there about a film where the focus keeps shifting to random new characters so there’s no underlying coherent storyline (with my goofy thought the idea continued to float around Austin until somehow he captured it)—with solid response to his whole catalogue from Dazed and Confused (1993), through his Before Sunrise (1995) … Sunset (2004) … Midnight (2013) trilogy, to many others of his own type of hits (although I wasn’t as fully overwhelmed by Boyhood [2024; shot in segments from 2002-2013; review in our July 31, 2014 posting] as so many others were)—you can get probably all you want to know about his life and career at this site; he’s even in the process of outdoing himself in shooting a story over extensive time with his Merrily We Roll Along project which he began in 2019, will continue for the next 15 years, assuming he lives that long (born in 1960, so he’d be about 80 by then).* With Hit Man he succeeds again (especially with the CCAL; more on that in the next section of this review), with a film based on a true story about the actual Gary Johnson (died in 2002, age 55) who did work with police as a fake executioner in order to arrest those who’d pay for such crimes (in Houston in the late 1980s-‘90s), although he never had an affair with a woman such as Madison, even though he did convince one would-be-client not to go through with her murder-for-hire plans.
*While you’re waiting for … Roll Along to be completed, you might want to know the stage version of this narrative won 4 Tony Awards: Best Musical Revival, Best Leading Actor in a Musical (Jonathan Groff), Best Featured Actor in a Musical (Daniel Radcliffe), Best Orchestrations (Jonathan Tunick).
You can find out quite a bit about the real guy—and how his life matches what’s depicted in this film—by watching this short video (8:01), then reading this biography and this one, then capping it all off by knowing Linklater worked on this idea for quite some time, fascinated by a 2001 article in Texas Monthly by Skip Hollandsworth about Johnson, which eventually led to his script, co-written with star Powell, so they both had a lot invested in the outcome as discussed by Linklater in this longer video (11:22; Spoilers), which you’d have to view constantly watching him sitting at a desk with a huge piece of cherry pie in plain sight (made me hungry for some), referring to the bit in the film where, as each “client” approaches Gary’s hit man character in the same diner, they ask him “How’s the pie here?” which he answers, to complete the agreed-upon-code, “All pie is good pie.” He also goes into detail on how this film manages to merge traditional aspects of classic Hollywood genres of film noir and screwball comedy. If that’s all got you intrigued enough, you might want to follow up with this extensive Linklater interview in The New York Times. Well, after all of this background I guess I should say something about the actual film, so here it is: Hit Man’s one of the best I’ve seen so far this year, with consistently effective acting throughout—especially by Powell who demonstrates a wide range of thespian-abilities in fooling his “clients” with multiply-funny fake personalities—a marvelously-crazy story that shifts gears when Madison enters the picture, great pacing where the flow of/within scenes never bogs down, a cleverly-constructed script that always maintains your attention, and a surprise ending (OK, nothing that came before would indicate things could go too wrong for our romantic couple, but there are some uncalculated-twists concerning Ray and Jasper), all contributing to a well-invested couple of entertaining hours from a superb filmmaker.
Bottom Line Final Comments: Hit Man’s been in domestic (U.S.-Canada) theaters since May 24, 2024, but as a Netflix product we don’t get any northern North America income info (although Box Office Mojo reports $1.9 million from a few overseas markets) I have no idea how financially-successful it’s proving to be, although I know it’s still playing in a few venues in my San Francisco Bay Area so you might be able to find it on a big screen if you prefer. Your most likely access, though, would be through streaming as long as you’re a Netflix subscriber (if not, for $6.99 monthly you can get a version with ads, $15.49 gets you into my level with no ads, or you could splurge to the premium level of $22.99 for whatever advantage that might offer), so in this case I encourage you to sign up for even just 1 month to get access to Hit Man and whatever else you might find of interest in their vast library. The CCAL seconds that motion, as the Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews are at an incredible 96% (not a cheap victory either; this is based on 257 critical evaluations), with the usually-stingier Metacritic average score at 82% (only 55 reviews, but that’s fairly common for them). As an example of the active support this film is getting, here’s Ty Burr in the Washington Post (got a full 100 in the MC tally, based on 4 stars of 4; actually, 7 of MC’s 55 hit the 100% mark, a miraculous achievement at this site): “ ‘Hit Man’ isn’t commercial in the strict modern Hollywood sense — there’s no CGI and no chase scenes, and not a single gun is fired (on-screen, anyway). But the script, co-written by the director and the star, is the kind that flatters an audience’s senses of intelligence and humor, and the central romance isn’t just ridiculously hot but funny and sweet — two people sparking to each other’s rhythms as they reveal themselves step by step.” If you'd want to indulge in more solidly-supportive reactions, you'll find plenty to choose from.
However, as I noted at the start of this posting, “You can’t please everyone,” and that includes Eric Kain in Forbes: “At times it was plodding. Often it was implausible. It was rarely funny enough or steamy enough to work as a screwball comedy or a rom-com. Arjona is gorgeous and talented, and Powell is an attractive and charming guy, but they don’t have the star power to elevate such a thin script. Linklater has made some great films, but despite this one’s high critic and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes, this isn’t one of them. The ending could have swayed me, could have convinced me that it was all a clever setup, tricking me until the last 20 minutes, with a great final twist of the knife. Instead, I was left rolling my eyes and wondering how on earth so many people thought this was a good movie.” Well, Erik, I (and a lot of others) think it’s good, so I’ll stand by recommending it, with hopes my readers’ll see it/like it too. Now, it’s time to depart using my standard device of a Musical Metaphor which I picked up this time from the end of the trailer, the Animals’ version of “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” (on the U.S. version of their 1965 album Animal Tracks) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4CP-mAjWwI because these lyrics work so well for Gary’s situation (on-screen and, as best I follow it, off-screen in real life): “When things go wrong, I seem to be bad / But I’m just a soul whose intentions are good/ Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood [...] If I seem edgy, I want you to know / That I never mean to take it out on you / Life has its problems and I get my share.” Yet, this famed British band wasn’t the first (nor anywhere close to the last) to record this song (written by Bennie Benjamin, Horace Ott [who had to credit it to his wife, Gloria Caldwell, due to conflicts in ASCAP/BMI music publishing regulations], Sol Marcus), so, for my wonderful wife, Nina, here’s the 1964 version by another Nina, Ms. Simone (from her Broadway-Blues-Ballads album), as it’s a favorite from one of my Nina’s favorite singers (although she also gets a lot of joy from Simone’s "I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl" [1967 album Nina Simone Sings the Blues], but we won’t discuss comments concerning "condiments" any further now).
SHORT TAKES
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting
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