Movies News Talk
Watching Glen Powell's highly praised comedy Hit Man reminds me greatly of Netflix's real assassin flick from 2023. Based on the actual account of undercover "hitman" Gary Johnson, Hit Man stars Glen Powell from Top Gun as college professor-turned-fake killer Gary and Adria Arjona as Madison, a would-be "client" who develops feelings for one of Gary's identities. Chaos occurs when Gary progressively changes his personality to become "Ron," complicating Gary's complicated double life with Madison and the New Orleans Police Department even more when Madison's spouse turns up dead.
Hit Man, co-written and directed by Richard Linklater, has gotten great marks from both reviewers and viewers. Currently the highest on the review aggregation site, the 2024 Netflix picture has a "Certified Fresh" 97% Rotten Tomatoes rating, surpassing Top Gun: Maverick. Hit Man brilliantly subverts conventional Assassin Movie assumptions under the premise that "hitmen aren't real," yet it arrives at an opportune moment following the popularity of another Netflix film from 2023 that follows a real hitman. Not only do two of the most revered modern directors produce both hitman-related Netflix films, but their satires also got amazing marks.
The popularity of Hit Man on Netflix should ideally inspire more viewers of the 2023 assassin film The Killer on Netflix. From filmmaker David Fincher, The Killer centers Michael Fassbender's anonymous true killer, whose life is threatened following a significant worldwide hit gone wrong. Although Hit Man's setting is still New Orleans, one interesting aspect of The Killer is that it features Fassbender's assassin character running all around the globe. Furthermore, one of the places Fassbender's character pauses in New Orleans creates another link between Netflix's Hit Man and The Killer films.
Movie Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score | Rotten Tomatoes Critics Score
2023: The Killer | 85% | 61%
2024 Hit Man | 97% | 93%
Since Richard Linklater and David Fincher have shown mastery of several genres since their film successes in the 1990s, it is especially fascinating that the two directors published popular hitman-based films on Netflix within a year of one other. Though David Fincher's The Killer follows a real contract killer with a more grim, serious approach, Richard Linklater's Hit Man has no actual assassins and adopts a significantly more humorous tone. Still, the two directors clearly succeeded in their endeavors; Hit Man scored a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes while The Killer ranked highly for both directors' widely praised filmographies with an 85%.
Beyond only using a fictional or genuine hitman as their protagonist, Netflix's Hit Man and The Killer films have common approaches to the action subgenre. Both movies stand out in their analysis of the core of a standard hitman movie, what mainstream culture expects of an assassin character, and how those stories usually finish for the assassin. With Richard Linklater's picture addressing the topics from a more overt psychological approach and David Fincher's film looking at them with more subtlety in the human relationships, The Killer and Hit Man are thus continuously tossing these Assassin Movie clichés on their heads.
Apart from Hit Man addressing various hitman and Assassin Movies as evidence of the "career killer" persona being a hoax, the 2024 Netflix video questions the expectations of those employing a hitman and their motives for doing so. Gary has a lot of would-be customers in Hit Man that emphasize the simultaneous foolishness and sincerity of why different people would hire an assassin, which is where the conflict of the movie starts with Madison. Gary's ideas on personality psychology also hold true as he progressively resembles his hitman pseudonym Ron and Hit Man's ending transforms him into somewhat of a "real" assassin he didn't believe in.
Though Hit Man and The Killer have similar ideas and satires, the Netflix films are also among the most fun films from two big Hollywood directors in recent years. With Hit Man resurrecting a distinctive crowd-pleasing, casual structure for Richard Linklater's films, David Fincher's Killer is the most joyful but twisted film he has made since Gone Girl in 2014. Though it was another entertaining hangout movie, Linklater's 2016 film Everybody Wants Some! mostly went under the radar upon release unlike his successful comedies like School of Rock and Dazed and Confused.
Based on a Texas Monthly piece of the same name, director Richard Linklater produces Hit Man, a 2023 action comedy. A Houston police officer poses as a hitman undercover trying to apprehend a gang of criminals until he falls for a woman on assignment. Deeper into the realm of crime, the Houston police discovers it harder and harder to get out from his new undercover persona.