Richard Linklater’s Hit Man is forgivably implausible

Glen Powell (right) and Adria Arjona turn true-crime caper into a high-calibre romantic comedy. Photo / Supplied

Film review: A few years back, between wrestling with the questions about how life goes by in Boyhood, and his Before series of films, director Richard Linklater had true-crime fun with Bernie. He cast his School of Rock star Jack Black in the title role of a mortician who murdered his wealthy widow companion.

That film was based on a Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth. So, too, is Hit Man, an enjoyable, forgivably implausible, rather sexy romantic-comedy-noir. It’s billed as “a somewhat true story”, based on Hollandsworth’s feature on Gary Johnson, a psychology academic who moonlighted for law enforcement, successfully posing as a hitman for hire.

The film shifts the story to New Orleans. Gary is played by Glen Powell, who co-wrote it and puts the handsome smarminess he took to Top Gun: Maverick and Anyone But You to good use, especially when opposite Madison (Adria Arjona), who contacts Gary’s killer ego “Ron” about her problematic ex-husband. He persuades her there are better ways of getting on with her life. Sparks fly between them.

Meanwhile, Gary is still working his teaching job, where he’s lecturing about questions of identity and ego, which somehow isn’t as contrived as it sounds. And in his side hustle, having been thrown in the deep end from surveillance tech support to undercover operative, he’s thriving in his chameleonic existence, even if his guises look like a Coen brothers-themed fancy dress party.

Made for Netflix, there is something slightly television-fied and episodic about it. But there are many movie-worthy scenes, too, like a classic with one Gary/Ron and Madison involving hastily improvised lines to fool his police colleagues eavesdropping on the conversation.

That scene, as well as an impressive amount of canoodling, help make Powell and Arjona a romcom couple for the ages.

Hit Man directed by Richard Linklater is streaming now on Netflix.