Congratulations Pixar for the first one-hundred million-dollar domestic opener for the year at the box office, the first since Barbie last year. Your animation studios have had quite a curse hanging over, presumably caused by a prick off the needle on a spinning wheel I suppose. But it begs the question, where is the elusive blockbuster for adults this year? You know, those beings that pay taxes and read these ancient scrolls I have heard of called newspapers? Yes, there has been some bigger movies of late (two starring Zendaya). A few more are on the way out, but what is the holdup? There is one film that I have seen which could have been, but is not in theaters.
Hit Man comes to us, courtesy of Netflix. After making the rounds at Venice and Toronto last year, the streaming giant swooped in with $20 million for the rights. Apparently Zaslov or Bezos didn’t have that laying around in their office cushions somewhere, too busy sinking four times as much into the latest CGI-schlock that never recoup the budget. Rule one: you make the mid-level films to pay for larger ones. No need for a business degree to understand, gentlemen.
As I casually step off my soapbox, we need to talk about how to make a star. Glen Powell is one of those actors for whom has what the kids call ‘rizz’ dripping from his pores, which makes it funnier when his parents held signs asking Hollywood to stop trying to make their son a celebrity at this movie’s premiere. Give him some great dialogue and a decent supporting cast to spar with and you have a movie. From first seeing him on Scream Queens years ago to his side character in Top Gun Maverick, there is not much he can’t do. It remains to be seen if Twisters next month will live up to the hype. And he had a minor hit with Anyone But You back in February. But here he has been given his true potential by working outside how a studio would mold him, becoming a leading man. His role as Gary Johnson allows him to chameleon his way into another man’s shoes, not just coast on charisma.
Gary is a mild-mannered philosophy professor who moonlights as a undercover aide to the police, researching potential suspects willing to commit murder-for-hire. When the team’s fake hit man gets suspended, Gary is asked to step in. Nervous at first, he takes to assuming these false aliases with zeal. All goes smoothly until he meets a young married woman who wants out of her abusive situation. This casual encounter sparks a light romance which threatens his position with the New Orleans PD.
It all sounds too strange to be true, but this only half right. Gary was a real man who did really put people away for crimes. Powell and writer-director Richard Linklater were enthralled by his story in Texas Monthly and wanted to make a film based on him. Sadly, the real Gary Johnson never got to see it, but I am sure he would get a laugh seeing his real arrests portrayed alongside sharing ice cream with a fictional lover he met on the job. The meet-cute has such masterful conversation, it is not a surprise this is from the same man who brought us the Before Trilogy. Powell and Adria Arjona have such bold chemistry, like Jesse and Celine if they were like Bonnie and Clyde. And that climax between three of our key players, beautiful while also disquieting, not unlike Linklater’s digital experiment Tape.
It is a shame that this has been relegated to Netflix. Services like these have broken the picture plane like Piccaso, but to what end? We miss people on large screens. For as large as the blockbusters are, they have pigeonholed moviegoing into tiny boxes. Give multiplexes a chance to surprise us. A gem like this shouldn’t go without notice.
