Continuing my countdown of last year’s best films…

Best Films of 2024
#7. Hit Man

Richard Linklater is among my favorite filmmakers for a lot of reasons, and one of them is that — when he isn’t riffing on his central thesis about the beauty in seemingly mundane human experiences — he can deliver an effortlessly charming high-concept crowd-pleaser like this.

Loosely based on a Texas Monthly article about a college professor who impersonated a contract killer to assist the Houston police, Hit Man is part crime thriller, part romcom, and part exploration of the meaning of identity. You know Linklater isn’t going to resist the urge to insert some armchair philosophizing.

Glen Powell co-wrote the script and delivers his best performance yet as Gary, the nebbishy professor who takes on exaggerated personas to ensnare his targets. He has a blast slipping into various accents and costumes, and the scenes of his stings are among the movie’s funniest.

Things get complicated when he meets Madison (the luminous Adria Arjona), a woman who wants her abusive husband taken out. Gary, in disguise as confident hit man Ron, convinces her to reconsider and the two begin a romance.

Powell and Arjona have the best chemistry I’ve seen onscreen in years — these are two impossibly sexy people. And as the stakes are heightened by legal and moral complications, they play off of each other in increasingly rewarding ways.

One late sequence involving police surveillance and the Notes app is an instant classic, a layered dance of subterfuge and seduction that’s more erotic than any love scene.

Hit Man is smart, funny, and sexy, and it spends its runtime turning up the dials on each of those attributes in immensely satisfying ways.