What is the first thought that surfaces in your brain when you see a title like Hit Man (2023), recently released on Netflix?  It stars Glen Powell as Gary Johnson, a college professor turned undercover assassin.  On the surface, you might be thinking it is an action flick.  After all, Powell has been in a lot of such films of late, including Devotion (2022) and Top Gun: Maverick (2022).  He will also be getting top billing in the upcoming Twisters.  Particularly with those last two, you have some of the most recognizable movies ever made.  Indeed, especially with Top Gun: Maverick, it seems like he is becoming the next Tom Cruise.  Powell certainly has the God-given jaw line for it.  He has also shown some range, with recent releases like Anyone but You (2023), a romantic comedy that made more money than I would have credited.  Hit Man is somewhere in between those things, which I attribute to the fact that it is directed by Richard Linklater.  He is the one that gave us the frustrating Before trilogy.  My spiritual director told me not long ago that I need to pray more before I watch something in order to let the Holy Spirit guide me to what insights to provide you.  I wholeheartedly agree.  Unfortunately, my dumb brain often heaps these facts on to my consciousness before I press play.  Thus, I saw Hit Man on Netflix, said “Huh?” to myself (with everything I have discussed so far flashing through my mind like a bullet train), and sat down for what turned out to be an odd mixture of all these things and some interesting philosophy thrown in for good measure.  I need to remember to pray more.

One would not peg Gary Johnson as a Hit Man.  He is a single, working as a college professor in New Orleans teaching philosophy and living a quiet life with two cats.  How Franciscan of him with that last factoid.  Arguably, his routine is not that calm.  Owing to the fact that he has a knack for electronics, and with loads of personal time on his hands, he volunteers his services to the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD), helping them with surveillance during undercover operations.  It is during a particular sting involving Jasper (Austin Amelio) posing as an assassin that Gary’s quietude is about to be interrupted.  Because Jasper is suspended for unethical behavior, Gary is asked to step into his role.  The NOPD is using fake contract killers in order to catch the people hiring them and put them in jail before a more serious crime is committed.  Becoming someone else is an uncomfortable process for Gary, who preaches to his students the importance of knowing themselves.  Only God can fully know us, but we will get more into that later in the review.  Though he is visibly nervous walking into the café where he supposed to meet the prospective client, he handles the situation with the ease of someone used to negotiating the particulars of being paid to murder others.  Indeed, he is so good at it that the NOPD decides to use him again in the same capacity.  With a little encouragement from his ex-wife, Alicia (Molly Bernard), who suggests that he needs to take some risks and put himself out there, Gary thrives in coming up with different ways to tailor a hit man to the person seeking him out, and he develops a reputation for putting away these potential criminals.  The bad part is when he has to go to court and hear people call him a monster for essentially entrapping people, but he always explains it to himself as having prevented something worse from occurring.  Once more his days are settling into a pattern until he is asked to lead to the arrest of Madison Figueroa Masters (Adria Arjona).  She is in an abusive marriage to Ray Masters (Evan Holtzman) and wants to get out of it by having him offed.  Gary, impersonating an assassin named Ron, sees that she is clearly troubled and gets her to use the money to instead get away from Ray and start a new life.  Before they part company, and since there had been some chemistry between them, Gary says to call him if she needs anything else.  Unsurprisingly, this is what happens a few weeks on from their first meeting, with her telling him that she has filed for divorce.  There develops a relationship between them based, to be frank, on sex, with them going so far as to come up with a “contract” to govern their interactions and keep things simple.  He proposes this in order to protect his identity, carrying on as the hit man Ron, while she is intrigued by this mysterious man of danger she has invited into her boudoir.  You do not have to be a Christian to know that all the lying, particularly on his part, is not healthy.  The fist problems arise when Jasper returns from his suspension and wants to resume his undercover work in place of Gary.  Jasper does not take the refusal well.  Another incident occurs when Gary and Madison have a chance encounter with Ray outside a nightclub, which ends with Gary pulling a gun on an enraged Ray.  The incident makes Gary wonder how final is Madison’s divorce.  As for Ray, he decides to seek out a contract killer to murder Madison, which leads him to Gary.  Gary does not maintain his role, and a shocked Ray walks away saying he will take care of the matter himself.  Gary then goes to warn Madison that Ray desires her death, but she feels safe by the fact that she is supposedly dating an assassin.  Nonetheless, a few days later Gary is called into the NOPD offices where his boss, Sergeant Hank (Gralen Bryant Banks), informs the professor of Ray’s demise.  Because Jasper has been following Gary, the former star of the operation thinks he has something on Gary to get the usurper to step down, having seen Gary and Madison together.  Gary goes to Madison to get the truth, and learns that she had killed Ray out of fear for her own safety.  This is the point at which Gary admits his ruse, and Madison is understandably upset about this revelation.  She says she is through with Gary, but the same cannot be said for the NOPD.  Jasper concocts a plan to get Madison to confess, with Gary using a wire to get it recorded.  Instead, he enters her house and uses his phone to coach her through throwing the police off her trail.  The person who is not fooled is Jasper.  When Gary returns to a thankful Madison, he finds Jasper waiting with her.  Jasper wants money from a life insurance policy Ray had left to her, but she drugged his beer, causing him to pass out in her living room.  Gary finishes off Jasper by suffocating the corrupt cop with a plastic bag, planning on making it look like a suicide.  And I guess this means they get to live happily ever after, as the last few scenes indicate.

As I alluded to in my introduction, and that last sentence might imply (to some), Hit Man is meant to be more comedic than anything else.  I am not sure what is funny about professing undying love while another person dies in your living room, but I am sure even my non-Christian brothers and sisters would agree with that sentiment.  Put differently, the film goes along rather light-heartedly until the relationship with Madison commences.  As a Christian, I was not thrilled by the notion of arresting these people for soliciting a contract killer.  To be sure, it is awful that they would even contemplate such a heinous crime.  The film talks about the emotion it takes to murder someone, and we have the phrase “crimes of passion.”  I have trouble with that notion since the central aspect of Christianity is the Passion of Christ.  We need to reclaim the word “passion” from the more vile constructions that modern culture and society has attached to it.  It is usually associated with either sex or violence, and that is sad.  While Jesus’ execution was undeniably violent, it was all done to Him rather than Him angrily lashing out at those that wronged Him.  By the way, “those that wronged Him” are not simply those that led Him on His way to Calvary, but all of us whenever we sin.  God has every right to let loose His own so-called passions on us for putting His only Son to death.  We are saved, though, by the fact that what Jesus did was salvific, again for all of us.  We have the true passion that is the redemption that we have, giving us the opportunity to experience faith in Him despite our sinfulness.  It has nothing to do with murder or sex like we see in the movie, and it gets quite philosophical about this topic.  It tells us that we need to learn to indulge our “id,” which is a short but fancy but short word describing our instinctive impulses.  Sometimes this can lead to great things, especially when you submit to being guided by the Holy Spirit.  The film wants it more the other way, which is sad for this Catholic reviewer.

What is sadder about Hit Man is how it ended.  I could have explained away Madison killing Ray as essentially preemptive self-defense.  Yet, when Gary murders a drugged Jasper at the end, that is not grounds for getting married, at least not in a Catholic sense.  It ruins what is otherwise a solid example of filmmaking.