Hit Man is a Movie in Search of its Why
The Friday High Five
Every Friday I share 5 things I enjoyed this week. Also, high fives are inherently cool, and I think we can all agree Friday is the bestest day. Hence the Friday High Five. 🙏🏻I genuinely don’t understand the enthusiasm for Hit Man.
Don’t get me wrong—it’s a good movie. Technically sound. Wonderfully cast. Surprising and fun. It makes full use of Glen Powell’s talents. Watching Anyone But You or even Top Gun: Maverick, you could be excused for thinking he was just another pretty face. But he can be comedic or dramatic. Hit Man lets him do both, though not enough of either.
More on that in a sec.
Powell has been on my radar since stealing the show in Everybody Wants Some!!; it’s always fun to buy stock in an actor and see dividends later on. Like Palpatine with a potential pupil with whom he can overthrow the galaxy, I’ve watched his career with great interest. It’s still too early to tell how his career will play out, but I think there are indicators. I can see him slotting into Brad Pitt’s “hunky everyman” now that Pitt is getting on in age. It’s on the table.
A movie like Hit Man could help Powell get there.
Hit Man is super loosely inspired by a true story about Gary Johnson (Powell), a dorky college professor who moonlights as an undercover ‘hit man for hire.’ It’s the first Glen Powell vehicle, a film that’s at least partly about giving Powell the chance to be a movie star. And he shines. Throughout, Gary adopts various personas to best fit a potential client’s ideal of what a hit man should look like. Hit Man is a Glen Powell costume party.
Interspersed with Gary’s undercover work are scenes of him lecturing at school. He’s a professor of psychology and philosophy, and spends a lot of time providing meta commentary on his undercover work, a new and growing area of his life. It’s well done, but I couldn’t shake the impression that the film was speaking directly to the audience, in a, “aren’t we clever,” sort of way. The writing is good, but it’s still just uninterrupted exposition.
It’s a minor gripe, and if it was my only complaint, I wouldn’t hold it against the film.
The bigger issue is Hit Man has no idea what it wants to be. It’s supposed to be a rom-com, I think, but it’s neither very romantic nor funny. I don’t remember laughing much, and I am the easiest of gets when it comes to humor. Like Anyone But You, Powell’s other recent rom-com, Hit Man falls short of funny and lands squarely in cute, which is the friend zone of movie genres.
It isn’t that Hit Man doesn’t have comedic ambitions. Several of Gary’s personas are clearly meant to be funny. I smile just looking at the orange guy. But they are little more than brief cameos.
The inherent humor of an unhip, middled-aged college professor pretending to be a killer for hire is immediately obvious. That’s the hook, and it’s a strong one. The movie bypasses hijinks in favor of more serious elements. Hit Man desperately wants to be a thriller. Which is obviously fine. But it presents as something totally different. Look again at the header image and tell me I’m wrong.
It’s also constructed like a rom-com. The meet-cute. The courting. The sex. (Lots of charged sex—Hit Man definitely strays into Basic Instinct’s lane.) Misunderstandings and outright lies.
To say more would be to risk spoilers, but if you’ve seen one rom-com, you’ve seen them all. But because Hit Man wants to be a thriller, none of the rom-com elements hit like they should. And the rom-com underpinning undermines the thriller. Muddying the waters further, Hit Man suddenly and unexpectedly turns into a black comedy in the third act.
Hit Man is a movie without an identity. It’s a mongrel. That doesn’t make it ugly or without value. I enjoyed watching it. But I don’t know why everyone seems to be falling over themselves to anoint it the best film of 2024. It’s not in the same league as Dune: Part Two.
Hit Man’s truest and best self is as a showcase for Glen Powell’s talents. Which is a good enough reason for me. Let’s just not pretend this movie reinvented the rom-com or anything equally preposterous.
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A trip to the library
I never go to the library with any objective. I don’t even necessarily plan on checking out a book. Though I’m obviously going to. Why would I not? I love to read and everything is free, which is the best kind of deal.
This week, I found myself wandering the film section, which is how I ended up with the top 3 books.
I tried the first season of The Expanse and couldn’t really get into it. I’m told the books are amazing. We’ll see.
You People
Unlike Hit Man, I hadn’t heard any buzz about You People, despite its seemingly incendiary title and the fact that the cast is Gen X catnip.
This movie is a vibrant, unfunny mess. Which is too bad, because I think the social commentary is interesting. It’s earnest and firm in its convictions, but forgets it’s supposed to be a comedy.1 Worse, it ignores the interesting premise—a Jew and a Muslim get engaged—in favor of low-hanging racial situations. This movie trades in stereotypes; the one time Eddie Murphy and Jonah Hill hang out, they go to the barber shop and the basketball courts.🫠
You People also does the impossible—it makes Eddie Freaking Murphy a humorless bore.
Every time Eddie is onscreen, I instinctively and preemptively smiled in anticipation of the laughs to come. But they never arrived. Eddie plays a devout Muslim named Akbar Muhammad. That’s the setup and the punch line. You’ll laugh more watching him try to become a pop star.2
You People is Anyone But You without the sex appeal. In place of Glen Powell, we get Jonah Hill as a puffy Logan Paul. Can’t believe I’m saying this, but Seth Rogan is a better rom-com leading man.
Behind Enemy Lines
This is not an objectively good movie. But I’m kinda fascinated by it.
Behind Enemy Lines (2001) is an action/war film in which a U.S. Fighter jet gets shot down over Bosnia. The plane’s navigator survives and has to cross the country on foot, evading squads and one determined assassin. Imagine a movie in which Maverick dies in the first 15 minutes and Goose is left scrambling.
What intrigues me is the casting of Owen Wilson as the lead.
I love Owen, think he’s hilarious and just dig his general vibe. Seems like a fun hang. But this movie suppresses everything that makes Owen Owen. Even though he spends the majority of the film alone, there’s none of the rambling self-talk he’s so good at.
It’s like they tried to repeat the Die Hard formula—cast a funny man as an action hero who is isolated and has to survive using only his wits—but with none of the self-depreciating humor and observations that make us love John McClane.
Speaking of Maverick: I was delighted to see Gabriel Macht—aka Harvey Specter from Suits—pop up in this movie.
Star Wars: The Acolyte
I have a lot of thoughts about this week’s episode.
Originally, I put them all here. But the email got super long, and I realized it made more sense breaking it out into its own thing. So you’ll be getting a free bonus article from me tomorrow.3
Here’s the beginning.
Spoilers, obviously.
“People are really complaining about last episode of The Acolyte.”
Me, rising my eyebrows. “Oh? You’ve heard?”
My wife is my litmus test for when something has escaped the nerdy bubble I frequent and has attained broader awareness. Unlike me, she doesn’t go in search of such morsels. Instead, they find her by way of the internet water cooler.
“Yeah,” she said, “They don’t like the way the story is going.”
It’s the complaint of every Star Wars fan ever. I’ve even been that fan, a time or two, when story was sacrificed at the altar of fan service or empty spectacle. But in this case, I had the high ground. The Acolyte’s only sin was trying to be different. “People are stupid.”
The Acolyte was bound to ruffle feathers because it’s firmly outside the status quo, and a loud subset of Star Wars fans only want the same Star Wars, always and forever. I was miffed but not surprised to find people on Reddit whining that Yoda hadn’t yet made an appearance; they were sharpening their pitchforks in anticipation of never seeing him at all.
They complained—predictably—that the Yoda-ish, Master of Jedi Masters role was filled by a woman (Rebecca Henderson). To give credence to their vitriol, they protested the casting on the grounds that Henderson is the wife of Leslye Headland, The Acolyte’s writer-director, and thus, nepotism. I’m sure the fact that she’s a lesbian had nothing to do with it.
The L word lays at the heart of this week’s teeth-gnashing.
The third episode involves a coven of Force witches who are neither light nor dark side. They just want to exist, on their own, without Jedi intrusion. Which sets up all sorts of interesting questions about the way Jedi operate. We get to see the traditional good guys in a less favorable light. It’s a tricky balancing act, one the show manages gracefully.
This week also sheds light on the twin’s parentage, which we didn’t realize we’d been in the dark on. It seems less immaculate conception than Force-assisted IVF, and thus, the sanctity of Anakin’s miraculous birth is preserved. But that’s a nuance that goes right over the angry mob’s head, who just see Disney “gaying up” their Star Wars by introducing a lesbian couple who found alternate methods of insemination.
Let’s be honest — Anakin’s Christ-like birth is one of the dumbest things Star Wars has ever done.
That’s all for this edition of the high five.
Did you see Hit Man? What’d you think of it? What about The Acolyte? What things brought you joy this week? Drop a comment!
The one and only time I laughed is when an old Jewish man asked Jonah Hill if he could look at his penis. Maybe that says something about me.
There’s also the trauma of seeing Eddie cast as the old man. I mean—I get it. He is old. But I guess I’m just not ready to see him playing this kind of role. Probably because it means I, too, am getting old.
You may actually get 2 extra articles from me this weekend; one on Saturday and a paid post on Sunday. And then the regularly-scheduled long form piece on Monday.
I watched Hitman the other day and I have to agree with you. My take away was they were trying to make a comedy but tried too hard to make it edgy. Especially with the ending. It is an interesting way to take it but when you do something like that, in the serious manner that they handled it, it just comes off harsh. Almost more like a character study of how if you pretend enough you can become something you're not.
I agreed to watch Hit Man although it didn’t really appeal to me despite having enjoyed previous Linklater flicks. Wish I hadn’t wasted the time. This was my introduction to GP and the early part of the film could serve as a highlight reel for his range. I would’ve preferred if the entire movie had consisted of him adopting these various personas and looks rather than focusing on the romance, etc.!