The audience’s love for a good assassin story is legendary be it John Wick, Kill Bill, or In Bruges, the promise of brutal action and thrilling plot always entice the genre lover. It gets better when wrapped in comedic elements like The Gray Man. Falling in the latter category is director Richard Linklater‘s Hit Man starring Hollywood’s latest heartthrob, Glenn Powell. The feature balances the hitman tropes with dark comedic moments to fuse a love story with a high-stakes mission.
Total Films has unveiled a new look at the feature, starring Powell and Adria Arjona. The images give away nothing but highlight the brewing romance between the leads as well as hint at its tone and aesthetic. Powell’s chemistry with co-star Sydney Sweeney in their latest hit Anyone But You was much touted by fans though looking at this image they’ll have a new chemistry to ship for.
What’s ‘Hit Man’ About?
Billed as a “sunlit neo-noir” Hit Man follows professor Gary Johnson (Powell), who moonlights as a fake hitman for the police. He descends into morally gray territory when he finds himself attracted to one of the potential criminals, Madison (Arjona), a beautiful young woman. Things take a turn when their steamy affair sets off a chain reaction of deception and escalating stakes.
The feature is co-written by Linklater and Powell and is inspired by a true story. Previously speaking to Collider, the director revealed, “The film is pretty demarcated. It’s kind of like everything up until the time where she gets back in touch with him, he meets her, but there’s a moment [in] the film we take off, once the couple kind of get going. That’s where I think the genre really kicks in, of the crime noir thing and the screwball comedy. It centers around that relationship, and a lot of that is kind of a flight of fancy we took.”
It seems Linklater took the essential tropes of a noir and found underlining humor in the romance to flesh out the themes of identity, as Powell’s character is a natural when it comes to inhabiting different guises and personalities. This feature will be one to look out for. The movie also casts Austin Amelio, Retta, Sanjay Rao, Evan Holtzman, Molly Bernard and Mike Markoff.
Hit Man will premiere on Netflix on June 7 after a short theatrical release. You can check out the new image above.
via Collider