HIT MAN (2024)

HIT MAN is a comic thriller on Netflix about a professor, Gary Johnson, who works a side job at the New Orleans Police Department as a fake hit man. Gary poses in different disguises and personalities to help the NOPD catch people who aim to kill off their enemies, including their spouses. However, one woman abused by her husband catches Gary’s eye, and he finds himself attracted to her. Narrated by Gary, HIT MAN has some really funny parts, marred by abundant foul language and steamy bedroom scenes. Also, the movie turns serious toward the end. This leads to immoral developments and immoral messages in HIT MAN.

Based on a true story out of Houston, the movie begins with Gary teaching psychology and philosophy to his University of New Orleans students. He looks to be the typical nerdy professor who gets mocked because of his witty personality and the fact he drives a boring Honda Civic. Gary returns to his home in the suburbs of New Orleans where he then feeds birds, with whom he’s fascinated, and takes care of his cats. Gary, who’s divorced but still friendly with his ex-wife, seems to live a simple, boring life.

However, in his spare time, Gary works undercover with the New Orleans Police Department gaining audio and video footage in murder for hire cases. Gary likes his comfortable life in the police van and behind the scenes, minding his own business. However, one day, a fellow officer, Jasper, employee is suspended for 120 days for getting caught on video beating up some teenage delinquents. So, it’s Gary’s turn to pose as the contract killer.

Gary is thrust into his first contract killer case with absolutely no training in the field whatsoever. Gary is nervous and terrified. As Gary heads inside a diner for his first meeting as a hit man, he does his best to pump himself up. Once inside, Gary sits down with the “client” and takes him through a graphic and violent description of what he would do to dispose of a dead body. Once the deal is made, and Gary has the confirmation he needs, the meeting ends, and the “client” is arrested outside the diner. The whole incident is a rush for Gary, and he turns out to be quite a good liar as an undercover cop.

As Gary settles into his new role, he begins to take on different personas and disguises. This helps him catch a series of people trying to hire him to kill someone in their life. One client mentions making the murder look like a suicide. Another client doesn’t care how their enemy is killed and how Gary takes care of the body. In each case, Gary sizes up the client and takes the approach that works best. At one point, however, Gary notes to someone that each potential “client” he meets seems filled with rage and anger. He finds is a perfect example of “how love has curdled into hate.”

Back in Gary’s normal life, he meets with his ex-wife who’s now pregnant. The two have a seemingly pleasant conversation that ends with the ex-wife telling Gary he needs to find a girlfriend.

Madison, the next client Gary investigates, catches his eye. He asks himself what kind of hitman he can be for her. Using the alias Ron, Gary meets Madison meet for the first time at a local diner in New Orleans. Madison seeks a hit man for her abusive husband. The two hit it off, but it’s under the guise of Ron’s fake persona. Gary surmises that Madison doesn’t really want to kill her husband. She just wants to escape the abusive relationship. So, instead of convincing her to hire him, Gary tells her just to take the money she was going to pay him, run away and start a new life. However, he gives her his hit man number and tells her if she needs anything else or changes her mind, to call him.

Gary’s boss is not happy that he let Madison go. He overhears her, however, talking with another officer, a man, in the hit man task force. His boss says she’d rather make love to the smooth-talking Ron than the boring Gary, and the man agrees with her.

One day, while sitting and reading with his cat, Gary receives a text message from Madison inviting him to join her at a dog adoption event. Gary doesn’t like dogs at all, but Ron, on the other hand, told Madison he prefers dogs over cats. In his narration, Gary claims he would never cross those lines because he’s a “professional,” but he justifies the meeting because humans aren’t perfect.

Madison informs Gary, who’s still posing as Ron the hit man, she’s getting a divorce and moved on with her life. As the two talk more, “Ron” and Madison begin having feelings for each other. Later that day, Madison and Ron share a drink at the bar, as if they’re on a date. They make their way back to Madison’s place and fornicate.

However, Madison and Ron later agree it was a bad decision. So, because he’s supposed to be a hot man, Gary as Ron puts restrictions on the type of relationship they can have. He and Madison agree to have a strictly sexual relationship. The next montage of scenes shows Ron and Madison being intimate with one ate her new place while also flipping back and forth to Gary’s real life as a professor and police consultant.

Although Gary keeps lying to Madison about his identity, he’s enjoying this new development in his life. In fact, Gary himself is starting to behave more like sexy, charismatic Ron than boring Gary.

However, some plot twists upset Gary’s applecart. As he scrambles to deal with each twist, things get more dangerous for both him and Madison. The developments also endanger their own relationship.

As a comic thriller, HIT MAN has plenty of laughs and romance, and some dramatic, engaging plot twists. As the story gets more serious, the movie seems to start heading down a dark film noir alley, like modern film noir classics such as the 1981 movie BODY HEAT starring William Hurt, Kathleen Turner and Ted Danson.

However, the movie suddenly veers away from film noir and has an unsatisfying ending where the “hero” decides to compromise his ethics and use the things he’s learned while posing as a hit man for the cops. Thus, HIT MAN ends up having a strong Romantic and antinomian, or lawless, worldview undermining moral standards. Not to give anything away, but the hero ends up with a new wife and a daughter, a new family, but he gets there by doing evil and deliberately flouting the law.

HIT MAN also has lots of foul language, more than 120 obscenities with many “f” words, plus some steamy bedroom scenes with partial nudity. The movie’s violence is not graphic. For example, one shooting takes place off screen. However, another scene shows a man being deliberately suffocated by a plastic bag.

HIT MAN’s filmmakers didn’t need any of that foul language. The steamy bedroom scenes could have been implied rather than even partially depicted. Finally, they should have tried to come up with a more satisfying, more uplifting and perhaps even a comical ending that didn’t support lawless evil. Sadly, HIT MAN turns an entertaining, rather funny script with an interesting hero into an eccentric, unexpected promotion of hedonism, murder and deceit. This movie is clearly a missed opportunity. The ending is one of the most disappointing, bizarre ones you’ll ever encounter, especially considering how enjoyable the movie’s first part is.