If you like your romantic comedies to have a lot of bullets as well as lots of belly laughs, Hit Man could be right on target. The new Netflix movie from legendary filmmaker Richard Linklater is getting glowing reviews, and some critics are saying it's the most entertaining movie in Linklater's already stellar career.
The trailer makes it look like a lot of fun, and it is – but so far, the reviews say it's also a lot darker than you might expect, as well as hotter. According to Critic's Notebook, "there's a sequence where Glen Powell is so hot that the audience spontaneously burst into applause. We actually clapped because of how sexually attractive this man is".
Why Hit Man looks like it'll be a big hit
The Netflix movie is based on a true story and features the aforementioned Powell as a hitman who falls for one of his clients. Except he's not really a hitman: he's undercover, working for the cops.
We featured the film late last year when Netflix dropped a massive $20 million for the streaming rights, and at the time it was sitting with a whopping 98% on Rotten Tomatoes. That's dropped very slightly, but its current 96% score is still the kind of thing many movies dream of achieving. Collider called it "one of the most thoroughly entertaining films of Linklater's career", while Total Film said it's "fizzy, funny, heightened... a damn good time [that] will leave you buzzing".
A common thread in the reviews is that while it's both fun and funny, Hit Man isn't scared to go darker than your average odd-couple rom-com. While there are ostensibly similarities to Mr & Mrs Smith (now also a streaming show as well as a movie) it goes deeper in its exploration of people living with huge secrets, and does so in a way that reviewers have described as "nerve-wracking and ethically challenging" (RogerEbert.com) and "deeply disturbing" (El Mundo).
Hit Man will be available to stream on Netflix from June 7, 2024.
