Hit Man (2024) Review: Richard Linklater and Glen Powell Find a Movie Star Inside a Costume Closet

This review reflects the author's personal opinion. Trumpwatcher is an independent film publication, not affiliated with any studio, streamer, or festival. We do not cover political content.

The thing this hit man review wants to say first is the thing the film itself never quite says out loud: a movie star is not a face, it is a hinge. Glen Powell, sharing screenplay credit with director Richard Linklater on a script developed over six years from a Skip Hollandsworth Texas Monthly piece about a Houston PI named Gary Johnson, spends the runtime hinging — between personas, between genres, between a man who plays at murder for a living and a man who has to figure out what the playing is making him. The film keeps its sense of humor about all of it. The hinge holds.

If you are deciding whether to give the film its hundred and fifteen minutes on whichever streamer carries it in your region: yes. This is the most loose-limbed, conversational thriller of 2024, a comedy that knows it is a comedy and a noir that knows it is a noir and refuses to settle on which it values more. That refusal is the engine.

What Hit Man gets right

Linklater has always been a director of long takes and conversational rhythm, and he uses both as a smuggling operation here. While the audience is watching what looks like another easy Linklater hangout — Powell and Adria Arjona riffing over diner coffee, a long handheld shot at a backyard party — the screenplay is quietly assembling a noir machine in plain view. By the time the genre flips in the third act, the audience has already accepted that this is the kind of film where people talk for ninety seconds in a single take, and the long takes start carrying tension instead of charm.

The specifics

Watch how Linklater and cinematographer Shane F. Kelly cover the early sting operations. Each "hitman" persona Powell plays gets a slightly different camera grammar: the redneck Ron is shot in handheld, locked-down on Powell's face; the Patrick Bateman impersonation gets wider lenses and a colder grade; the chic European is all medium-close ovals with rack focus. The covers do work the script can offload — we feel the persona before we are told its name — and that frees the dialogue to be funny instead of expository.

Spoilers are kept to the final section, clearly labeled. Read on freely until you reach it.

Where the film loses ground

The screenplay's biggest weakness is also a feature it cannot easily fix: the moral center of the film is whatever a viewer brings to it. Gary's escape into Ron-the-fake-hitman is presented sympathetically; the consequences for the people he stings are sketched lightly; the eventual third-act decision lands or does not depending on whether the viewer has signed on for the screwball framing. Some viewers will find that the film is having its cake and eating it. They are not wrong; they are just describing the cake honestly.

A more granular complaint: Austin Amelio's police-partner character is underwritten relative to the gravitational pull he is supposed to exert in the third act. The screenplay needs him to function as both threat and audience surrogate, and Amelio plays the threat well, but the scene where his character pivots from peer to obstacle could use one more beat of motivation. Editors Sandra Adair and Sara Corrigan-Smith do what they can in the cutting room; the missing beat is on the page.

How this film sits in its genre

Read as a screwball noir, the film's nearest siblings are Howard Hawks's His Girl Friday (1940) for the verbal pace and the gender-paired energy with Arjona, and Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight (1998) for the way it lets erotic chemistry power the plot without ever pretending the chemistry is innocent. Read as a Linklater film, it sits in a lineage with Bernie (2011), his other true-crime Texas footnote, where his casualness about violence is itself a moral position: the world is not stylized into easy good and evil, and the audience has to do the moral math itself.

For readers tracking Powell's transition from a supporting-cast player to a leading-man brand, this is the film where the transition becomes undeniable. Top Gun: Maverick (2022) revealed the charm; Anyone But You (2023) revealed the box office; this is the one that reveals the craft. Our companion essay on editing and pacing uses the long-take strategy here as a worked example.

Performances worth singling out

Glen Powell carries the picture without breaking a sweat, but the more interesting performance is Adria Arjona's. As Madison, the client who hires Gary's "hitman" to kill her abusive husband and instead falls into a flirtation with him, Arjona has to play four things at once: a woman in genuine distress, a woman performing distress, a woman who knows the difference, and a woman who is becoming uncertain that the distinction matters. She plays all four without letting any of them collapse into the others. The scene at the diner where she orders pie is the one to watch — the way she places the order is the entire character.

A quick note on craft

Adair and Corrigan-Smith's cutting deserves a longer note. Linklater's long takes give them less to work with than a typical comic thriller would, so when they do cut they cut for thematic weight rather than for jokes. Watch the transition from the first sting (where the cut lands on Powell's "Ron" face for laughs) to the third sting (where the same kind of cut lands on Powell looking at himself in a mirror for the first time, no laugh, no music). The rhythm of comedy and noir cutting differ by a beat; this hit man review keeps coming back to that beat.

SPOILERS AHEAD — read only if you have watched the film

The third act asks the audience to accept that Gary and Madison literally murder her violent husband, frame the death as accidental, and live happily ever after. The film knows this is a screwball-noir leap and waves about it cheerfully; whether you accept the wave depends on whether you have decided this is a Bernie-style "the world is morally ambiguous and that is the point" film or a "the leads earned this because the husband was awful" film. The screenplay's craft is in refusing to choose between those readings.

The final beach scene reads differently on a rewatch. The wide static shot of Powell and Arjona walking on the beach with their kids is held just a little too long — past the point a conventional romantic comedy would have cut. The hold is doing work: it is asking whether the contented domestic image is the resolution or the cover story. The film smiles either way. That smile is the whole point of the picture.

The verdict

Trumpwatcher Score: 4.0 / 5

Rating: 4.0/5

Watch it on whichever streamer carries it in your region. The film is built for streaming intimacy — it is talky, character-driven, and rewards a second pass — and it will not lose much without the theatrical screen. Pair it with Soderbergh's Out of Sight for the romantic-criminal genre rhythm, or with Linklater's Bernie for the true-crime Texas DNA. Either pairing turns one good night in front of the television into the foundation of an actual film education.

For more on Glen Powell's developing chameleon work, this hit man review sits alongside our wider reviews archive; for the methodology behind our 4.0 verdict, see how we score films.

This article is the author's independent critical opinion and does not constitute professional advice. Trumpwatcher is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any film studio, distributor, streaming service, festival, political party, or campaign. All trademarks, titles, and proper names referenced belong to their respective owners and are used for editorial identification only. We do not host, link to, or condone unauthorized copies of any film. Always watch films through official theatrical or licensed streaming channels.