Netflix’s Fake Assassin Movie, Hit Man, Is So Enjoyable It’s Almost Criminal
If you have fringe political views and some stranger shows up to offer you help committing an act of terrorism or political violence, think twice. As Reason’s C.J. Ciaramella wrote in 2022, that helpful stranger is probably working with the feds.
Similarly, if you’re out to have a rival or a lover murdered but don’t want to do it yourself, you should probably be suspicious of anyone you meet who claims to be a professional hit man. The murder-for-hire contractor across the diner booth from you is probably an undercover cop. Hit men, at least as portrayed in movies and airport thrillers, don’t really exist.
Yet people holding murderous grudges want to believe that they do. And that’s how Louisiana college professor Gary Johnson—no, not that one—became a fake hit man and the subject of a surprisingly charming new movie from director Richard Linklater.
Hit Man stars Glen Powell as Johnson, a nebbish professor of psychology and philosophy who began helping local police catch wannabe killers, first by setting up cameras and microphones and then by assuming the role of fake hit man himself.
Or, to be more precise, roles. Johnson leans into the acting aspect of the job, donning wigs and costumes to accentuate his various personas. Some are downright silly, but the point is that his theatrical accouterments allowed him to try becoming a different person. And that, in turn, helped him change himself—and become the person someone else needed, or wanted, him to be.
Hit Man, which was cowritten by Powell and Linklater, punctuates the film with brief sequences in which Joh
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