Film Journal 2024: Hit Man

Film Journal 2024: Hit Man
Directed by Richard Linklater

If we are talking about a simple, easy, entertaining enough comedic blockbuster, Hit Man is perfectly fine. A reasonable way to spend a few hours with a likeable star, a passable script and a mix of eye rolling moments and fun banter.

The problem is, the film clearly wants to be more than this. It wants to be taken seriously as a smart, sexy thriller. On this front it falls drastically short of its mark. Beginning with this central problem- the way the film is designed makes it feel like we are watching Powell play a character who is playing characters. This a problem because for the central conciept to work we need to believe in the character transformation, not in Powells ability to have a distinctive on-screen charm. 

Let’s get more specific. Problem number 1. The film uses the dual and opposing personalities of the philosophy teacher with no personality or social cache and the undercover hit man with personality and social cache to establish this tension that sits at the heart of the course the teacher is teaching- is the self simply something we are inevitably handed as a construction made up of all those determining external forces that make us who we are, or is the self something we (an operative will) can effectively change by actively embodying someone different, thus pushing back against those external forces. So here is the problem. The film presents no active process in which we can actually explore this tension. The process is simply set in play within the first 10 minutes of the film and effectively answered before we arrive at the answer (at the end of the film). We are asked to buy in to what effectively becomes two working caricatures, both of which we know are equally false. Not only does it feel like there is zero context for understanding Powell as a schmucky teacher with no personality, there is zero context for how it is he goes from that to an uber cool man of confidence and mystery.

Problem number 2: the entire set up for the film digs itself a hole no amount of colorful philosophizing can dig itself out of. If we are to take this film seriously, the teacher personality is who we don’t want to be, and the alpha male hit man is who we want to be. Why? Because it gets us the ladies and some street cred in our socially bound constructs that we call society. That’s the message we get in the first 20 minutes to half hour, and the rest of the film just dances around this basic fact before realizing it ultimately just needs to concede the point- this is how the world works, and no amount of higher education bent on intellectualising this away can change it (although it pretends to try).

Problem number 3: wheras the central concept is good (using the notion that the “hit man” construct is a made up idea we have come to accept as true because of its cultural presence as a way into the question, why is it that we are drawn to such fantasies), the films decision to use the philosophy class as a way into this question gets undercut the  minute the plot turns the concept of the hit man and its undercover personalities into a singular personality. It’s at this point that all of the set up goes out the door, because the bigger questions get subsumed by the singular and superficial nature of the plot. So much so that it’s attempts to try to keep the philosophy in play end up feeling awkward and muddled the more the whole charade, bent on establishing twists and turns, goes on. The ending is meant to be this grand revelation that parallels the characters transformation, but the transformation is a ruse. It’s not real and it doesn’t exist and it’s grounds were never really established in the first place. The biggest casualty of this is then the intellectual, or philopshical argument, that is running underneath. It’s conclusions about the self, meant to liberate us from the shackles of determinism, is also clearly a ruse. It doesn’t exist. No amount of inspirational speeches or heavy romanticizing is able to take the aims of our humanity and turn it into something other than a construct. In fact, the films message only leaves us more enslaved to it. Funnily enough, there is a scene on a park bench where this is basically outlined for us. It’s one where two of the characters are debating the nature of the self. One argues that we are who we are because it is who we were determined to be by all the external forces that shape us, the other argues that research suggests we can become a different self. The question that is posed to this moment is, but what happens to the old self? Or further, which one is then real? And how is this new self not an equal construction determined by external forces. And what drives ones ability to change? Are some of us more able than others, and if so, does that not speak to determinism?

It’d be great if the film had actually embraced these questions. Instead I sweeps it under the rug under the illusion of being smarter than it looks,

Final problem: not only does the film end up towing the line with predictability by leaning into the twists as one of the defining traits of the story, it ends up undercutting all the potential outcomes one can foresee by stopping abruptly mid twist. The ultimate outcome is leaving everything but the ruse without actual resolution. There is no lingering questions, nothing to grapple with, no nuance, nothing but a singular and inevitable conclusion. It simply underscores this as a viewing experience that is about as in and out as they come.

One more added gripe- how do you write a film about a hitman where the hitman literally is talking about the hits and divulging his identity in public for everyone to hear? Lazy writing.

Now let me repeat. There is a world in which these problems aren’t anywhere near as big as they become. That’s a world where this film is satisfied with being a middle of road action-comedy. It’s perfectly fine in this lane. A good enough time but mostly forgettable. The problem is, that is so clearly not what this film aspired to be. Thus it keeps setting itself up for failure as it goes, unable to really commit to what could have made this a great film.