REVIEW | OPINION: In ‘Hit Man,’ Richard Linklater mixes screwball comedy with more serious matters

Madison (Adria Arjona) finds herself attracted to “Ron,” a character played by undercover policeman Gary Johnson (Glenn Powell) in Richard Linklater's “Hitman” (Netflix)
Madison (Adria Arjona) finds herself attracted to “Ron,” a character played by undercover policeman Gary Johnson (Glenn Powell) in Richard Linklater's “Hitman” (Netflix)


People (like me) lament the shift of the grown-up (as opposed to "adult") movie from the cineplexes to streaming services like Netflix and Apple TV+. But it's not all bad. I haven't been to an opening-weekend night screening of a putative blockbuster on my own dime in years; when we go to the movies for ourselves it's almost always on a weekend afternoon, and it's almost always to a scarcely attended foreign or independent film.

So while I could bemoan the fact that Richard Linklater's latest film "Hit Man" was not given much of a theatrical release before opening on Netflix, barring an advance screening, I would have waited to watch it on the smaller screen anyway. That's not to say that "Hit Man" wouldn't benefit from being seen in a crowded dark room in the company of strangers, only that by my cost-benefit analysis it seems like a fine film to watch at home.

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