With over 100 reviews, Netflix’s Hit Man sits at 97% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics have embraced the R-rated action comedy from co-writers Richard Linklater and Glen Powell, which Netflix snatched up after its Venice and Toronto film festival screenings. Directed by Richard Linklater (Boyhood) and starring Powell and Adria Arjona, Hit Man is loosely based on the true story of Gary Johnson, an unassuming man who worked as an investigator for a district attorney’s office and masqueraded as a hit man.
Skip Hollandsworth’s 2001 Texas Monthly article, the inspiration for the film, followed the incredible story of Johnson and his secret life working with the police on murder-for-hire cases. The movie’s Gary (Powell) is a college professor with a side gig as a pretend hit man in police sting operations. Gary has a real knack for transforming into a client’s expectations of how a hit man should look and act. And in one particular case, his act leads to making an unlikely love connection.
Co-writer/actor Glen Powell and co-writer/director Richard Linklater recently took part in a lengthy press conference with the cast, hosted by Netflix in support of the film’s streaming release on June 7, 2024. The following are highlights of what the creative duo had to say during the virtual Q&A.
On Why the True Story was Ripe for a Feature Film Treatment:
Glen Powell: “It was early on in the pandemic and I stumbled upon this article in Texas Monthly called ‘Hit Man’ by Skip Hollandsworth. And, you know, immediately, it was so clear there was such a compelling character there. I mean, if you look at the real-life Gary Johnson, he was a psychology professor who actually moonlighted with the police department, did AV equipment, was an ornithologist, Zen Buddhist. It was just like such an incredible character piece, but I didn’t really know where it went. All I knew is that there was a fascinating guy here.
They called him a Laurence Olivier fake hit man because he approached the job differently. Instead of just becoming the hitman for hire across from someone who is trying to kill their husband or their wife or their business partner, he embodied their fantasy of what a fake hit man is because hit men don’t exist. So, he took this skill set to a whole new level and started putting on these disguises and all these different things. And it was just a fascinating idea.
[…] He also had this professorial sort of part of his job. So there [were] already these ideas of identity baked into the way he thought. You know, kind of the way he moved through the life. And so, I called up Rick and I said, ‘I just read this amazing article called Hit Man.’ And Rick took a beat and he said, ‘Yeah, I read that article when you were in seventh grade.’”
Richard Linklater: (Laughing) “I think I might’ve said your diapers.”
Glen Powell: “Your diapers, yeah.”
Richard Linklater: “But that would’ve been a little too…”
Glen Powell: “And if we were in the same room, he would’ve patted me on the head.”
On Their Approach to the Story:
Richard Linklater: “I was so excited to get this call from Glen because that story had been kicking around in my head. I had talked to Skip. I had had a couple of meetings on it over the years, but it didn’t really work. It didn’t really work as a film because there was this repetition. It didn’t really go anywhere. So, I told this to Glen. I said, ‘Yeah, I don’t think it really works.’ He said, ‘Well, let’s talk about it.’ I was like, ‘Oh, wow. It’s the pandemic. What else are we gonna do?’
So, work we did every day for a while. We would just have hours of conversations. And yeah, Glen kind of loosened the log jam I was in. He said, ‘Well, what if we deviate? You know, why does he have to stick to the facts?’ I was like, ‘You can do that?’
[…] Once that floodgate opened, we were off to the races. We just started having these great ideas. And you know, the last two-thirds of the movie kind of comes out of that. The genres kick in and it becomes this thrill ride, you know? But it was grounded in that reality, what Glen described – that Gary Johnson’s life reality. That was a real person, a real job, the strangest occupation anyone could ever have. So, I don’t know. It was a lot of fun, man.”
On Narrowing Down the Film’s Focus:
Glen Powell: “I think one of the big breaking points for when we were talking about it … because obviously talking about the real-life Gary Johnson there is sort of a moment where you have to go, okay, the story wasn’t revealing itself in a natural way, but then there was this paragraph about this woman that the real-life Gary Johnson sat down with. And instead of sending her to jail like he did with everybody else … she was approaching him trying to kill her husband or trying to get him to kill her husband, and he didn’t believe that she was capable of this thing. He sort of believed in the best of her and talked her out of it, and it was like the first time that ever happened. And there was a relationship that developed from that.
And so, all of a sudden, the article just sort of moves on. Rick and I were like, ‘Well, what if we pull at that thread?’ We have so many questions about what that relationship is and how they reengaged with each other. You know, did he stay as the fake hit man?
So, we started kind of pulling at that thread and, really, that was a big breaking point because that was the thing when we started thinking about if he got stuck in this identity as this fake hit man, you have this amazing character mask where you have a guy who’s teaching humanity, but not experiencing humanity. Getting stuck in the mask in the body of someone who embodies all the dangerous, exciting elements of what humanity is, this sort of roller coaster ride, and ends up finding that he can be a more three-dimensional fun version on the other side of it.”
Richard Linklater: “And it’s just a coincidence the roulette wheel of hit man he gets stuck in happens to be the smoldering, sexy, charming Ron. Not Dean, the orange cherry freak.”
On What Keeps Them Grounded:
Richard Linklater: “What keeps you grounded is a low budget and a tight schedule. (Laughing) It keeps you very much grounded.”
Glen Powell: “Yeah. I mean, it’s really true. I think the beautiful part about this experience is that I remember writing this with Rick. You know, we took this movie out and no one got it. […] We were so proud of it. We were so excited about what it said about identity and passion. We thought it was so universal and exciting. It was going to be an audience movie, and then it was just crickets. And no one got it. Nobody responded to it because I don’t think it fits into one box, right?”
Richard Linklater: “But when they did, it was like, well, you could tell they kind of want it to be a real hit man movie.”
Glen Powell: (Laughing) “You know, it’s like we’re trying to do something original. And I think the town always wanted it to be something else. I think what I’m just really proud of is we got to make this movie independently, make the movie that we wanted to make. And it doesn’t subscribe to any genre. It doesn’t fit into any box. And I think the reason it’s a really great audience movie, and the reason people are responding to it, is you can’t get out in front of it. You can’t predict it because it’s all the things.”
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Hit Man is rated R for some violence, sexual content, and language throughout. In addition to Glen Powell and Adria Arjona, the film stars Retta, Austin Amelio, Molly Bernard, and Sanjay Rao.
This post was last modified on November 11, 2025 7:23 pm