Oscar-nominated director Richard Linklater’s sunlit neo-noir stars Glen Powell (Anyone but You, Top Gun: Maverick) as strait-laced professor Gary Johnson, who moonlights as a fake hit man for the New Orleans Police Department. Co-written by Linklater and Powell and inspired by an unbelievable true story, Hit Man is a cleverly existential comedy about identity.
JBFC Programming Coordinator Ian LoCascio writes: “Since arriving on the scene in 1990 with his nonchalantly radical debut Slacker, Richard Linklater has gone on to direct some of the greatest films of the ensuing decades. With a body of work including such contemporary classics as Dazed and Confused, The Before Trilogy, School of Rock, and Boyhood, Linklater has firmly established himself as being one of the most exciting filmmakers of his generation. With his newest film, Hit Man, Linklater and his co-writer / leading man Glen Powell have crafted a crowd pleaser for the ages—and a film which ranks among the finest (and the most unabashedly fun) of Linklater’s career. It’s best to go into Hit Man knowing as little as possible, as I did when I saw it at the New York Film Festival last year, and allow yourself to be swept up in one of the funniest, sexiest, most genuinely thrilling films I’ve seen in years. And there’s no better place to do that than here at the Jacob Burns Film Center, when we open Hit Man on May 24th!”
