Written by: Belle McIntyre

Watching Glen Powell inhabit the multiple roles of Gary Johnson, a resolutely nerdy professor of philosophy and psychology at a New Orleans college with a side gig as a hit man sounds like a stretch. He works as a technician on police surveillance details to entrap would-be criminals planning to hire an assassin, in the act of making the deal. This is accomplished using a wired undercover cop posing as a potential contract killer. When the cop is put on probation and temporarily taken off the job, Johnson is suddenly thrust into the breach, since he knows the drill from surveillance work. Surprisingly, this single, cat loving, bird-watching, introverted loner takes to the new job with amazing alacrity.

He seems to be following his own admonitions to his students when he encourages critical thinking rather than taking in the academic framework of his courses as fixed truths. He takes off on issues like authenticity, embracing your own reality, and living fully. This aspect of Johnson’s day job lends more credence to the radical shift in his other life and expression of his inner repressed emotions and desires. His adlibbed interactions with the “marks” are outrageously detailed and wildly inventive. His role playing expands to wearing wigs, fake scars, and thoroughly considered clothing to create characters. He embraces the art of deception and the freedom it allows his wild imagination, with different personas and accents. He is so good at his job that the police are looking at him to replace Jasper (Austin Amelio).

However, he loses the plot when he meets the beautiful Madison Masters (Adria Arjona) who wants to hire him to kill her abusive boyfriend who has terrorized her for years. He immediately falls for her and talks her out of the contract and encourages her to keep the money and use it to start a new life. They end up having a torrid affair which leads to multiple complications. The boyfriend wants to hire Johnson to kill Madison and Jasper wants his job back. These dangerous dudes are a menace to both of them. Jasper is trying to blackmail Johnson and Madison’s husband is found dead. There is a spectacular scene with a cellphone toward the end in a hilarious denoument.

This would not be my usual choice of films to write about and when I watched the beginning and failed to be engaged I went to sleep. But I needed a film to write about so I revisited it the following day and found myself really loving it as a guilty pleasure. Curiously, it is the polar opposite of my last review, also about a hit man, Le Samouraï, made in 1967 by the great Jean Pierre Melville, starring Alain Delon. It has all of the brilliant cinematography of the best film noir. This film does not have any distinctive visual flare, which makes the point that it is espousing; the myth of the assassin is simply romanticized fiction. He has humanized the profession which is loosely based on an interview in Texas Monthly about the actual Gary Johnson. Linklater met with him also. It is clever, entertaining and great fun.

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