Hit Man: Scores a bullseye

Hit Man (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for sexual content, occasional violence and relentless profanity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

This one’s too much fun.

 

Richard Linklater has enjoyed an impressively varied career during his four decades as a self-taught writer/director, covering all manner of genres, styles and approaches. Even his lesser efforts are interesting in some way, and his gems are choice.

 

While posing as an assasin-for-hire named Ron, Gary (Glen Powell) discovers that his
newest "client," Madison (Adria Arjona) is much more complicated than his usual marks.

Hit Man is a ruby.

Linklater and star Glen Powell — rising rapidly into the A-list stratosphere — collaborated on this scripted adaptation of Skip Hollandsworth’s mesmerizing 2001 Texas Monthly non-fiction article. The film’s tone is cheeky from an initial promise that “What you’re about to see is a somewhat true story,” and it gets more audacious by the minute.

 

What’s truly amazing is the degree to which this film’s events are factual ... but do yourself a favor: Watch it first, before looking up Hollandsworth’s magazine piece. (Which, I promise, you’ll definitely want to do.)

 

Many of the true portions come under the heading of You Simply Couldn’t Make Up Stuff Like This.

 

Gary Johnson (Powell) is the epitome of mundane. He teaches philosophy and psychology at the University of New Orleans, where his students snicker over the fact that he drives a Honda Civic. He lives with two cats — named Id and Ego, of course — feeds birds, and carefully spray-waters his houseplants. His reading leans toward Carl Jung; a copy of Memories, Dreams, Reflections rests on his desk.

 

His very appearance is dull, thanks to Juliana Hoffpauir’s crafty costume design and Ally Vickers’ hair styling. Add the baggy jorts and unflattering glasses, and Gary looks like a total dweeb ... which, given Powell’s actual hunky self, is rather astonishing.

 

Gary does have a side hustle: He’s an electronics whiz, and for some time has assisted the New Orleans police with surveillance equipment and cleverly concealed bugs. His frequent partners during such assignments are cops Claudette (stand-up veteran Retta) and Phil (Sanjay Rao), a hilariously understated Mutt ’n’ Jeff duo who trade dry quips.

 

Their frequent targets involve ordinary citizens, who — fed up with a spouse, family member or business partner — want to hire a contract killer to, um, take care of the problem. Permanently. They invariably ask “disreputable types” — topless dancers, bar bouncers, bail bondsmen — for a “reference” ... at which point, said individuals usually contact the cops, who set up a sting. The mark’s lethal desire must be spoken aloud, and money must change hands.

 

Fellow cop Jasper (Austin Amelio) traditionally has played the “hit man” role; he’s smarmy enough to look the part.

The Greatest Hits: A most unusual love story

The Greatest Hits (2024) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for drug use, sexual candor and fleeting profanity

Available via: Hulu

By Derrick Bang

Writer/director Ned Benson’s beguiling little charmer expands upon a premise that’ll feel familiar to everybody: the power of a beloved song to take us back in time to where we were, and who with, the first time it was heard.

 

After a couple of chance encounters, sparks fly when Harriet (Lucy Boynton) and David
(Justin H. Min) playfully argue over who gets to purchase a rare, one-of-a-kind LP in
her favorite music store.

But in the case of Harriet (Lucy Boynton), the result isn’t merely a memory; she literally re-lives the few minutes when she first heard the tune with beloved boyfriend Max (David Corenswet).

This isn’t a happy ability. 

 

As revealed when this story begins — after Harriet, alone in her apartment, cues up The The’s aptly titled “This Is the Day,” on her fancy turntable — that tune was playing when she and Max were involved in a car accident. He died; she wound up in a coma for a week.

 

Upon wakening, she discovered — to her horror — that every tune she and Max ever heard, during their four years together, yanks her back to that particular moment of their relationship. Her past self’s awareness of this doesn’t help; we realize, from Harriet’s forlorn bearing, that she has tried many, many times to prevent the accident. And failed.

 

Two years have passed, during which Harriet has — as a means of self-preservation — cocooned herself into an isolated life. She has forsaken a once-budding career in music production, to work in the silence of a library. When not there, or at home, she wears noise-canceling headphones, in order to prevent accidentally overhearing a “trigger” song; if that happens, her present-day self goes into an unconscious trance ... which, obviously, could be dangerous.

 

Over time, she has catalogued scores of trigger songs that allow her, in the privacy of her apartment, to re-live happier moments with Max. But this is unhealthy, as it prevents her from processing grief; indeed, such sessions simply fuel her misery. Her only companion is the devoted little dog she “inherited” after the accident.

 

She always sits in an antique armchair, facing her system speakers, in a pose that cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung cheekily lifts from Maxell’s iconic 1980s “Blown-Away Guy” ads for audiocassettes. (I have to wonder how many of this film’s viewers will recognize the reference.)

 

Jamie XX’s “Loud Places” sends her back to the music festival when she and Max first met. Yellow Days’ “Gap in the Clouds” finds them during a romantic moment on an isolated beach. And so forth. (Benson’s film is wall-to-wall music; every song is carefully selected to add impact or irony to a given scene.)

 

It’s like a drug, and Harriet is hooked: “It’s so easy to be pulled back into the past.”