"Hit Man"

  ☆☆☆☆ 

What strange, fractious times we live in, when everything—and, increasingly, it seems everything—can elicit angry arguments and defensive posturing. Take Richard Linklater's latest low-key film Hit Man, which to my mind is just about as enjoyable as movies get. Many disagree. Angrily, defensively, assertively and in no uncertain terms they make it clear: Hit Man is bad.

In fact, Hit Man is very good, though it's got a quirky, oddball approach that fits Linklater's sensibilities, and doesn't care too much if audiences don't vibe with it. Moviegoers of a certain age know that even Linklater's exquisite Before films have met with head-scratching claims of boredom and smug elitism.

Not coincidentally to all this vehement debate about Hit Man is that this laid-back neo-noir comedy, which owes more than a little debt of gratitude and style to Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye (a movie that had its own vocal detractors in its day), is that Linklater's film debuted on Netflix with a minor theatrical release. Almost everyone who has seen the film has seen it at home.

I was fortunate enough to see it on the big screen, and Hit Man is a movie that benefits enormously from the theatrical experience. I'm beginning to think that's the crux of the problem, rather than the film itself. In a movie theater, there are essentially three choices: fall asleep (or do something else distracting, maybe involving the person you came with), leave, or watch the movie. Generally, people don't choose the first two options, though there's an exception for everything.

When you sit down and watch Hit Man unspool (or its digital equivalent) in front of you, it takes a little while to get into the film's funny little rhythms, though Glen Powell is immediately appealing as Gary Johnson, an unassuming college professor with the oddest of side gigs: He builds surveillance technology that helps the New Orleans Police Department in sting operations to capture would-be assassins. He goes along on these jobs, and ...

Well, what happens next in Hit Man is the fun. The movie plays best if you don't know anything else.

It plays worst, apparently, at home on Netflix. That's no surprise. If you have, roughly, three options at the movie theater, you have substantially more at home. You can make dinner or talk with friends or check your phone or look up the movie's stars on the Internet or get a pizza delivered or get high or get drunk or cut your toenails or feed the dog or anything else you want that you cannot do in a movie theater, where your attention is focused on the screen. At home, your attention is often focused almost anywhere but the screen.

Hit Man needs attention. It needs thought. Its jokes, which are many, sometimes take a minute to hit. And when its plot finally gets cranking, the movie assumes you have been paying attention all along. The minute Madison Figueroa Masters (Adria Arjona) walks onto the screen and tells her sordid, sad story, you'd better be listening and watching and keeping track.

Hit Man turns from low-key comedy and quirky slapstick into a captivating neo-noir that has all the classic elements, including some unexpected turns and some dark morality.

"I turned it off after 15 minutes because nothing happened." "A weak plot." "Awkwardly stitched together." Yes, Hit Man will seem to have all those flaws if you watch it at home while you're doing other things, or while you're wondering if there might be something different to watch. There's always something different to watch. The temptation to pause, mute or go back to the home screen is strong—especially for a movie like this, that depends on your commitment, that feels more like a character-driven melodrama from the Eighties, something like The Verdict or Absence of Malice that assumes its viewers are not distracted and inattentive.

Back to the film: It's a delight. It rewards patience, and cares enough to have a thematic perspective, even when its relative morality begins to feel questionable—which is part of its beauty. When a film is carefully enough made to make us question the decisions its characters make, that's a film worth watching. And Hit Man is very much worth watching.

Viewed June 12, 2024 — Egyptian Theater

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