Hit Man is based on a true story, though the film takes that premise and runs with it in directions reality never considered. Glen Powell stars as Gary Johnson, a mild-mannered philosophy professor at the University of New Orleans who helps the local police department with tech support on sting operations. When the department’s usual fake hitman gets suspended, Gary steps in as a replacement and discovers he has a talent for becoming someone else. He’s so good at it, in fact, that he starts to lose track of where the performance ends and Gary begins.
Richard Linklater directed from a script he co-wrote with Powell, and the collaboration shows. The film has the loose, conversational energy that defines Linklater’s best work, combined with a star turn that announced Powell as a legitimate leading man. It debuted at the Venice Film Festival in 2023 before landing on Netflix in 2024, where it became one of the platform’s most-watched original films.
Glen Powell’s Transformation Engine
Powell is the reason to watch, and he knows it. Gary’s various hitman personas, each tailored to the psychological profile of the person trying to hire a killer, give Powell the chance to play a different character in nearly every scene. A leather-jacketed tough guy for one client. A soft-spoken professional for another. A manic biker for a third. Each persona is distinct, funny, and played with a commitment that makes the comedy land without turning the film into a sketch show. Underneath all the disguises is Gary himself, a man discovering that pretending to be interesting is making him actually interesting, and Powell sells that internal shift with enough charm to power a small city.
The romantic chemistry between Powell and Adria Arjona is the engine that drives the second act. Arjona plays Madison, a woman who comes to “hire” Gary to kill her abusive husband. Instead of simply completing the sting, Gary talks her out of it, and what follows is a relationship built on a foundation of lies that both characters know are lies but choose to believe anyway. Their scenes together crackle with a tension that’s equal parts romantic and dangerous, and Linklater shoots them with an intimacy that makes you forget you’re watching a crime comedy.
Linklater’s direction is characteristically understated. He doesn’t call attention to the craft, letting scenes breathe and trusting his actors to carry the humor and emotion. The pacing is relaxed without being slack, and the film moves through its various sting operations and romantic complications with a confidence that makes the 115-minute runtime feel shorter. The philosophy lectures Gary delivers in class, about identity, free will, and the construction of self, weave thematically through the plot without being heavy-handed.
The comedy works because it’s character-driven rather than joke-driven. The laughs come from watching Gary navigate increasingly absurd situations while maintaining various disguises, and from the gap between his buttoned-up professor self and the person he becomes when he puts on the role. Supporting performances from the police department characters add warmth and texture without stealing focus.
The Austin, Texas setting (standing in for New Orleans) gives the film a sun-baked, casual atmosphere that matches its tone. This is a movie that feels like a late afternoon in a warm city: unhurried, pleasant, and slightly intoxicating.
Where Hit Man Loses Its Nerve
The third act is where opinions diverge. The film’s first two-thirds balance comedy, romance, and light suspense with impressive ease, but when the story requires real stakes and genuine danger, the tonal shift feels abrupt. The movie that was content to be a charming romantic comedy about identity suddenly wants to be a thriller, and the transition is bumpy. Characters make decisions that serve the plot rather than their established personalities, and the tension that should build in the final stretch feels manufactured rather than earned.
Madison’s arc in particular suffers from the tonal gear change. For most of the film, she’s a complex, compelling character whose relationship with Gary has real emotional depth. In the third act, her role narrows, and some of the nuance established in earlier scenes gets flattened by plot mechanics. Arjona does her best with the material, but the script doesn’t give her enough to work with in the home stretch.
The “based on a true story” framing creates expectations the film can’t fully meet. The real Gary Johnson’s story is interesting on its own terms, and the liberties the film takes with it, particularly in the romantic subplot and the ending, sometimes feel like they’re selling the premise short. Players who look up the real story afterward may feel the film chose the less interesting version of events.
Some viewers found the philosophical underpinning too on-the-nose. Gary’s classroom lectures about identity and the self map too neatly onto his personal journey, and the film occasionally underlines its themes when letting them sit beneath the surface would be more effective.
The Man Behind the Mask
Hit Man works best as a film about the thrill of reinvention. Gary discovers that performing confidence creates actual confidence, that playing a character can reveal parts of yourself you didn’t know existed. That idea is potent and relatable, and Powell’s performance gives it physical form. The question the film poses, whether the “real” you is the person you’ve always been or the person you could become, is more interesting than the crime plot surrounding it.
Linklater has spent his career exploring similar territory, from Boyhood’s meditation on time to the Before trilogy’s conversations about love and identity. Hit Man is lighter than any of those, but it’s working with the same raw material, just disguised in a crowd-pleasing package. The disguise works.
Should You Watch Hit Man?
If you enjoyed Knives Out, The Big Sick, or Ocean’s Eleven, Hit Man operates in that same zone of smart, entertaining filmmaking that respects your intelligence while keeping things fun. It’s a date-night movie, a Friday-night-with-friends movie, a movie that sends you home in a good mood even if you can poke holes in its logic later. Skip it if tonal inconsistency is a dealbreaker for you, or if you need your crime films to commit fully to either comedy or thriller. Hit Man is the kind of movie that’s better if you don’t think about it too hard, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
The Verdict on Hit Man
Hit Man is a star vehicle that works because the star in question has enough wattage to power it. Glen Powell’s performance anchors a film that’s smart, funny, and romantic in equal measure, with Richard Linklater providing the kind of relaxed direction that makes everything look easy. The third act can’t maintain the balance the first two-thirds establish, and the film’s ideas about identity work better as subtext than as stated theme. But as a piece of pure entertainment from two collaborators clearly enjoying themselves, it’s the kind of movie that reminds you why you like movies in the first place.