Hit Man

Gary Johnson is a mild-mannered university professor in New Orleans who takes on an unusual side job with the police: posing as a contract killer to catch people trying to hire one. He turns out to be good at it, inventing a different persona for each client. His life gets complicated when he meets Madison, a woman looking to have her abusive husband killed. Instead of following procedure, Gary warns her off and begins a relationship with her while hiding who he really is. Their affair sets off a chain of consequences that pulls Gary further from the life he knew.

Richard Linklater directed and co-wrote the film, the twentieth of twenty-two features he has directed in chronological order, following Hometown Prison and preceding Blue Moon. He wrote the screenplay with Glen Powell and Skip Hollandsworth, and produced alongside Jason Bateman and Michael Costigan. Powell stars as Gary, with Adria Arjona as Madison, Austin Amelio as Jasper, Retta as Claudette, Sanjay Rao as Phil and Molly Bernard as Alicia. The production involved 48 credited cast members and 154 credited crew.

Made for about 9 million dollars, the film returned roughly 5 million at the worldwide box office. It holds a rating of 6.8 out of 10 on IMDb from around 129,000 votes and the same score on TMDB from a much smaller base of about 1,764 votes. A critics' rating of 8 out of 10, drawn from 301 reviews, sits clearly above the audience scores.