Hit Man
I have never been more confused by the reception of a film than I am by Netflix’s new comedy-drama Hit Man, a film by longtime director Richard Linklater. The movie is scoring big with critics (who aren’t named Erik Kain) and audiences alike, and over at Reddit, the reviews are glowing.
I am baffled. I am utterly mystified. It’s like the entire world went crazy and left me—and just a small handful of others—behind. What’s going on? The critics must be crazy, sure, but the audiences along with them this time!
Usually, when I really like something that the rest of my peers seem to hate, the audiences also tend to like it. Or I see the opposite divide, and critics really like something—like The Acolyte—but audiences can’t stand it. I usually find myself on one side of a controversial movie, either agreeing with critics and disagreeing with audiences—like The Green Knight—or the other way around.
It is a very rare day when a movie is beloved by both critics and audiences that I find myself standing over here scratching my head and asking “Why?” Why do people like this movie so much? It’s . . . really not good. And hey, maybe if this was a debut picture from some starry-eyed newcomer who had never been behind a camera before, written by a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed brand-new screenwriter, I could cut it some slack. But Linklater directed Dazed and Confused over 30 years ago, and School Of Rock and Boyhood and Before Sunrise (and the other two films in that trilogy) and plenty of other classics.
This feels like amateur hour to me. As I noted in my review, it feels like three different films awkwardly stitched together: The oddball comedy, where Glen Powell’s character Gary Johnson dresses up in silly costumes and takes on goofy personas to hoodwink criminals in his fake hit man act; the rom-com bit (that critic Jason Fraley hilariously described as “Fifty Shades Of Gary”); and the final fake film noir bit that really convinced me that this movie had no clue what it wanted to be. For a film about identity, Hit Man has none.
So why do all these critics and moviegoers have such a crush on it? Is it the handsome, easy charm of leading man Glen Powell? Is it the sizzling good looks of Adria Arjona? At least Powell gets to be funny. Arjona is basically a character without any personality. She’s given no backstory, no life to explore, no character development. She just shows up and looks hot. And in the third act, when she had the opportunity to surprise us as a ruthless femme fatale, it’s all a fakeout. She’s just a damsel in distress, after all—albeit a murderous one.
I don’t get it. I also don’t mean to belabor the point, but I’ve just never witnessed anything like this before. This is a 7/10 on a good day. I’d give it two stars out of four, feeling generous. If I’d seen this in theaters and you’d asked me to give you a prediction on its Rotten Tomatoes score, I’d say 65% with critics and maybe 70% with audiences. And that’s not because it’s a good movie, but because it’s an easy, mostly feel-good movie with attractive leads. What gives?
Here’s my video review of the film:
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