“Hit Man ”Review: Glen Powell Proves He's the Leading Man of the Moment in Delightful Comedy-Thriller

'Hit Man' is now streaming on Netflix

Given the title, you might think Hit Man, starring leading-man-of-the-moment Glen Powell, wouldn’t be much different from other recent Netflix films about assassins: Michael Fassbender’s well-oiled The Killer, for instance, or even The Mother, Jennifer Lopez’s exercise in cold, murderous fury.

In fact, Hit Man is a complete original, with a magical quirkiness all its own: Stare down the barrel of a gun, and a bouquet of paper flowers may pop out.

This is another way of saying that Hit Man is directed by Richard Linklater, whose movies have included gently pointed celebrations of romance (Before Midnight), childhood and adolescence (Boyhood and Dazed and Confused).

Hit Man is about a decent, confused human being learning to live life on his own peculiar terms — just that. Like The Holdovers, it’s something of a throwback to the kind of eccentric, character-driven Hollywood film that scarcely exists anymore. It's soft and amusing, and it doesn't push.

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Based (very loosely) on an article published in Texas Monthly in 2001, Hit Man is the singular story of Gary Johnson (Anyone But You's Powell), a philosophy professor who quotes Nietzsche to his students, urging them to take full advantage of their future — although his own solitary life, shared with some cats, isn’t exactly carpe diem.

That changes when he takes on a side job doing surveillance work with the New Orleans police (he’s an electronics nerd). He becomes a last-minute sub in a sting operation, pretending to be a hit man for hire and ensnaring unhappy wives, husbands and lovers eager to be unencumbered of their annoyingly insignificant others.

Gary is thrilled by the amount of actorly self-invention the job requires. Like the real Johnson, who was referred to as the Laurence Olivier of field operations, he tries out costumes and accents, several of them so ridiculous it's hard to imagine potential clients not wondering if they were meeting with Mike Myers. The natural response in such situations would be to ask for an autograph and skedaddle.

Then Gary gives himself a very sexy makeover — it’s the male equivalent of Cher dying her hair in Moonstruck — for a meeting with Madison (Adria Arjona), who wants to off her abusive husband.

Madison’s entrance is the one time Linklater indulges in a little film noir glamour — she’s filmed with a backlit gauziness — and it suggests that Hit Man is going to be a sort of oddball Body Heat or maybe a James M. Cain homage played at a more laconic pace (Linklater isn't overly concerned with keeping you on the edge of your seat — if anything, he encourages you to just sink back).

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Madison, it turns out, may very well be playing Gary for a sap. But unlike Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner in Prizzi's Honor, a mobster rom-com that ends in tragedy, Powell and Arjona are mostly engaged in an escalating and very flirtatious game of killer cosplay — a game that they find exhilarating.

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(The film even suggests, in its oddly forgiving, nonjudgmental way, that Gary's clients regard meeting a hit man as an intoxicating opportunity to flirt with turning what's been mere fantasy into reality. They're finally going to live their best life, even if it's in the worst possible way.)

Arjona’s performance, while just as sexy and seductive as Powell’s, also has an attractive touch of what might be called blind, not necessarily intelligent hope — in this regard, by suggesting an unsullied quality you can't quite put your finger on, she perhaps steals the movie from her costar.

It would spoil the film’s surprises to spell out the plot any further, except to say that the two fall head over heels in love, and that neither of them is terribly truthful about anything other than their passionate regard for each other.

Things get tricky, and even potentially dangerous before everything reaches a surprisingly calm resolution: Gary comes to understand and accept himself in a revelatory new way. He embodies Nietzsche’s favorite saying from Pindar, “Become what you are.” It can be fun.

Hit Man is now on Netflix.

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