Hit Man review – Richard Linklater’s thoroughly entertaining fake-killer caper

Glen Powell plays a mild-mannered professor posing as a contract killer to catch would-be criminals in this diverting noir comedy loosely based on a true story

For this thoroughly entertaining comedy thriller, Richard Linklater finds the distinctive and weirdly uncomplicated register of sunny geniality that he so often gives us – when he’s not working on more demanding movies like Boyhood or the Before series. And yet the question of criminal violence presented in terms of goofy unreality gives this film the flavour of something by the Coen brothers.

It is loosely based on the true story of Gary Johnson, an undercover law enforcement officer in Houston, Texas. Johnson specialised in posing as a “hitman” in exotic disguises, setting up meets with people who wanted other people offed, secretly taping them while they said so explicitly leading to them being charged with conspiracy to murder, while always at risk of having the charge overturned due to entrapment.