Hit Man

The screenplay Richard Linklater wrote with Glen Powell comes from an article Skip Hollandsworth published in Texas Monthly in 2001. Its subject was Gary Johnson, a college teacher who posed as a contract killer for the Houston police in the late 1980s and the 1990s. The film moves him from Houston to New Orleans and into the present; most of what follows is invented. Johnson died in 2022, and a dedication to him appears before the closing credits. Powell stars, shares the writing credit and is one of the producers. Gary builds a separate identity for each suspect, and the question the film keeps circling is how much of what a person calls a self was chosen. Filming took place in New Orleans in autumn 2022 on a budget of about 8.8 million dollars. The film screened at the 80th Venice festival, and in Toronto Netflix bought distribution rights for 20 million. Powell was nominated for best actor in a musical or comedy at the 82nd Golden Globes, and the screenplay was nominated by the Writers Guild of America in the adapted category. A good fit if you want a setup that treats identity as something put on and taken off. Not for anyone expecting fidelity to the real case; the last stretch leaves the record behind.