Hit Man is the wild new Richard Linklater movie that’s been dominating Netflix, remaining its most-watched movie for the past 10 days since it was released on June 7, 2024. Glenn Powell stars as Gary Johnson, a man who helps the New Orleans police department arrest (or entrap) various people who pay a killer-for-hire to murder family, friends, or enemies. Gary pretends to be the titular hit man, wearing a wire beneath a variety of different disguises and getting people to explain their crimes on tape. But when he falls for a beautiful young woman (Adria Arjona) who wants to escape her abusive husband, Gary gets in over his head.

Gary takes over this fake hit man position from Jasper, an undercover cop who is put on paid leave after a video emerges of him beating up some young kids. Austin Amelio (The Walking Dead) is excellent as Jasper, a dirty (in every sense of the word) cop who is comically pathetic in many ways, but also brilliant in his ability to wheel and deal. He’s almost charming in a way, as if he’s part of this brotherhood of scumbags and that he’d look the other way for anyone unless it benefitted him. “Spot on. Yeah, absolutely,” Amelio told MovieWeb, adding:

I mean, you know, someone’s taken his job. It’s something that he was really good at, and it was sort of his livelihood. So any little thing that that happens with Glenn’s character, or something that he finds out, he clings on to it and really dives in,

Is Jasper the Real Protagonist of Hit Man?
Hit Man 3.5/5 From director Richard Linklater comes Hit Man, a 2023 action comedy film based on a Texas Monthly article of the same name. Undercover and trying to catch a group of criminals, a Houston police officer poses as a hitman until he falls for a woman on assignment. Finding himself diving deeper into the world of crime, the Houston officer finds it increasingly difficult to escape his new undercover persona.Release Date September 5, 2023 Runtime 1hr 53min Studio AGC Studios, Aggregate Films, Barnstorm Productions Where to watch Netflix Studio(s) AGC Studios , Detour Filmproduction , Aggregate Films , BarnStorm Productions Expand

Hit Man is honestly an odd film to lead Netflix’s most-watched movies. It’s a hodge-podge of different genres told in an unpredictable, weirdly upbeat way. That’s even more incongruous considering the romantic leads are practically psychotic. As we write in our review for Hit Man:

“Madison and Gary’s relationship says a lot about them. It would normally be a dating dealbreaker when you find out a woman tried to have her abusive husband killed, and is now horny for a professional murderer. Another dealbreaker — when a man chooses the fake persona of a hired killer over his actual personality, worried that he won’t be as appealing if he wasn’t a violent murderer.
When you strip back the sexy rom-com vibe from
Hit Man
, it reveals itself as a film about two complete psychos
.”

“Totally, 100%,” agreed Amelio. “In fact, I think I’m the protagonist of the film, in a way.” Laugh if you’d like, but it’s more plausible the more you think about it. In the hands of another filmmaker, this could’ve been a much less fun movie and a more sinister one. Amelio explained:

“That’s the thing, if it would have been a different director, I think someone would have had to put their finger on a certain genre and been like, ‘Alright, this is what it needs to be,’ with a very firm belief in what the tone is. But with Rick, that was sort of the beauty of it. It’s gonna be, like, a screwball comedy, rom-com, dark fantasy, all these things wrapped in one, and it seems to work.”

“That’s just the magic of Rick,” continued Amelio. “He has a certain touch on films, and in particular this one. You know, you’re reading the script, you’re like, ‘I’m not really quite sure what this film is,’ in terms of tone and in terms of genre, but I’m just gonna have to trust that Rick is gonna put his touch on it, and it’s gonna be a product from him. That’s the cool thing about Linklater, is that he can do anything and it somehow seems to seep into the culture pretty easily. And people are aware of that, from Dazed and Confused, and Slacker, and all these films that he’s done, it’s just, he makes his way in, and people want to see what he makes.”

Related Richard Linklater Says Hit Man Is His Answer to the ‘Infantilization’ of Modern Movies Richard Linklater made Hit Man to snap back at Hollywood’s fear of more mature movies.

How Austin Amelio Approached Jasper

Austin Amelio is fantastic at balancing humor and menace in the character without making him a caricature. Linklater and Powell’s script makes Jasper an ambiguous character, one who could’ve been presented in a much less amiable way, especially if Amelio wasn’t playing the part. As he told us:

“I just tried to find moments of vulnerability with him. For example, in the first scene when he’s sort of a little bit emotional and pissed, I just tried to play those moments as real as possible. Because really, characters are so many different things, and when you have those little insights into someone’s vulnerability, you just really try and do it as honest as possible so it humanizes them. I never try and make anything a character or a cartoon, you know. I think the funniest thing is to try and just make it as real as possible.”

While half of Hit Man and Gary Johnson are based on a true story, the adversarial character of Jasper was a fabrication of writers Glen Powell and Richard Linklater. In fact, they wrote Jasper specifically for Austin Amelio, who had worked with both of them in Linklater’s 2016 comedy, Everybody Wants Some!! Amelio explained:

They wrote this part for me, so I guess they definitely had something in mind. Rick said, ‘You know, I think you could have a lot of fun with it,’ essentially. And that’s how I felt, as well. You could just have a lot of fun taking it in a lot of different directions.

6:47 Related Richard Linklater and the Cast of Hit Man Discuss Their Killer Netflix Movie Director Richard Linklater and the cast of Hit Man (Glen Powell, Adria Arjona, Retta) discuss their #1 Netflix movie.

Glen Powell Tightens the Plot for Richard Linklater

Although the three had worked together on Everybody Wants Some!!, there’s a tangible difference in Linklater’s filmmaking here thanks to Glen Powell’s contributions. Gone is the metaphysical aimlessness of Before Sunrise, Waking Life, or SubUrbia, with a tight, mechanical plot in its place. Amelio explained:

“This was one of the first films that Rick made that actually had a serious plot. Most of his films take place in sort of a time period, and there’s a loose plot going on. But this was like a real plot. So I think Glenn brought that to the table, and the nice thing about Rick is that he’s just super loose with everything. You know, he’s not a very controlling guy in a sense. We did a lot of rehearsals before the film, and we got to put in our ideas, so it just makes it a comfortable place to play.”

That sense of “play” formed the building blocks of the rehearsal period, in which the cast would tinker with the script until everything felt natural. “Once we’d get the writing to a certain point in rehearsals, that becomes the script for the film. So, once it’s there and we’ve played with it a lot, once it’s locked in, you stick to that,” said Amelio. “I mean, obviously there’s little things you can do with it here and there, and things will come up. It’s just the nature of filmmaking or acting, you can’t predict what you’re going to do in the environment because you haven’t been there yet. But essentially the script is the script.”

Related Why Netflix’s Hit Man Has Everyone Talking About One Scene Directed by Richard Linklater and led by Glen Powell and Adria Arjona, one scene in Hit Man encapsulates moviemaking synergy at its finest.

Spoiler Alert: Austin Amelio on That Epic Penultimate Scene of Hit Man
Netflix

Before the actual ending of Hit Man, the penultimate scene is almost like a short film in and of itself — tightly scripted, extremely tense, set in one room in real time, bringing the three main characters together. Jasper confronts Gary and Madison, threatening to expose them. He seems to be the one in control, but the power shifts when we realize that Madison would go so far as to kill a cop to protect herself and Gary. It’s this moment when you truly realize that Gary and Maddy are indeed dangerous murderers and not just playing sexy make-believe. Austin Amelio broke down the scene and his approach:

“I mean, that scene was interesting because there was like a real beginning, middle, and end that I wanted to kind of get across, where it’s like, okay, Jasper has complete control of the room. And then I wanted people to sort of just see him disappear into nothing by the end of it. So it was pretty technical, and I really had to figure out what sort of drug he was on and what effects that would have, and how long it would take, and all these things. But that was probably the most fun I had doing a scene, for me, I had a real blast.”

Audiences have been having a real blast, too, with Hit Man still at the top of the charts. You can watch it on Netflix through the link below: