Can a hit man be redeemed? Oh, sure, it happens all the time—but it helps if some really bad dudes killed his dog. Ten years ago, Keanu Reeves enjoyed a commercial comeback with “John Wick,” playing the titular assassin, who was once retired and happily married. But after losing his beloved wife—and then seeing the dog his wife gave him murdered by gangsters—Wick snaps, getting revenge by utilizing his still-potent assassin skills. Who’s gonna begrudge a guy going on a four-movie killing spree when there’s a dead pet involved? Likewise, Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne used to be a fine-honed government agent who left a trail of corpses in his wake. Still, once he finally realizes the error of his ways, he loses his memory, regains it, and then goes after the U.S. officials who brainwashed him. Perhaps Tom Hanks’ “Road to Perdition” character gunned down tons of folks in his day, but now that he’s on the run with his sweet son, he’s gonna become a good dad—and, by extension, a good man at last. Frequently, a movie hit man isn’t really evil—he’s just someone who needed to see the light.
These are hardly the only ways storytellers subvert our expectations about trained killers. Because we’re used to big-screen assassins being cold-blooded, filmmakers like to throw us curveballs, presenting audiences with idiosyncratic hit men. In “Collateral,” Tom Cruise is a philosophical assassin, serving as an unlikely mentor to Jamie Foxx’s timid cab driver. In “Pulp Fiction,” John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson are like a comedy duo, riffing and wisecracking and shooting the shit when they’re not shooting people. Or maybe the characters’ murderous tendencies are meant to be a larger cultural commentary. Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Conformist” starred Jean-Louis Trintignant as a reluctant assassin swept up in Italy’s fascist movement of the 1930s—he kills to forget his homosexuality and his feelings of being an outsider. Embracing fascism and bloodshed are just ways to be accepted to conform to a cruel society. More than 50 years later, David Fincher’s “The Killer” starred Michael Fassbender as a blasé assassin who’s just one more cog in the gig economy—he kills to make ends meet. Whoever thought being a hit man was all glamorous duds and cool moves is in for a rude awakening.
That process of demystifying continues with “Hit Man,” which comes to Netflix on June 7. Based on a true story, the film features Glen Powell as Professor Gary Johnson, who works part-time with the local police, posing as a contract killer to ensnare criminals looking to hire him to bump off people. Gary is a rather undynamic individual, but when he goes undercover, he becomes bolder—it’s as if he’s playing the badass, macho hitman we all imagine from the movies. In the process, he lands a beautiful woman (Adria Arjona) and acquires a newfound confidence he never had in his real life. Being an assassin would be wrong, but pretending to be one might not be the worst thing.
“Hit Man” is a funny movie with a serious idea at its core: Hit men don’t exist, but we wouldn’t mind inhabiting their world, if for no other reason than to forget our own measly existence for a little while. Hollywood has long sold the fantasy of the hit man, but it’s notable how often filmmakers have pushed against that fantasy. The killers on the screen are eminently lethal, but even they can’t rub out the impossible image we’ve created of them.