My wife and I watched "Hit Man" a few days ago and found it frustrating.
On the one hand, it feels like a screwy Coen Brothers-esque comedy (especially when Glen Powell, who's great, starts donning costumes and personas). On the other hand, it plays at being a knotty, twisted thriller laced with pitch-black humor, moral and legal quandaries, and ridiculous sexuality. And it ends up being neither. I did like how the movie kept us guessing, especially with regards to Adria Arjona's character, but it felt like the place the movie ultimately ended up was less interesting than our various theories.
And I totally agree with Sarah: the movie's coda left a bad taste in our mouths. I'm all for dark, twisted humor, but it felt like the movie was just being cheeky with us at that point.
HIT MAN works for me right up until it doesn't. It's coda really bothered me, waving away any moral ickiness that the climax brought up. There's a shot right before the coda that I wish Linklater would have ended on, which would have made for a more uncomfortable note to go out on that would have probably landed harder. Linklater's usually good with endings (Before Sunset might have the best final shot ever), so it's surprising he went with something so tidy (from what I understand, Netflix doesn't give notes).
I was surprised by the ending too, and kept waiting for the film to do something to subvert or at least complicate the resolution to Gary's journey. Everything in that final sequence is so Hallmark-channel tidy that I can almost believe that the tidiness itself is the subversion, and Linklater is trusting the audience to experience it as discordant. If so, though, I don't think it works that way.
That tidiness was what made me really mad about this movie (I’m a little more down on it than Kevin is). Loved the movie right up until the moral event horizon gets crossed when Gary doubles down with the plastic bag, then got really frustrated with the coda. Usually I’m not a “movies need to end in a way that aligns with my own moral code” kind of person, but that coda felt like a betrayal of the themes brought up in the classroom in the prologue.
My wife and I watched "Hit Man" a few days ago and found it frustrating.
On the one hand, it feels like a screwy Coen Brothers-esque comedy (especially when Glen Powell, who's great, starts donning costumes and personas). On the other hand, it plays at being a knotty, twisted thriller laced with pitch-black humor, moral and legal quandaries, and ridiculous sexuality. And it ends up being neither. I did like how the movie kept us guessing, especially with regards to Adria Arjona's character, but it felt like the place the movie ultimately ended up was less interesting than our various theories.
And I totally agree with Sarah: the movie's coda left a bad taste in our mouths. I'm all for dark, twisted humor, but it felt like the movie was just being cheeky with us at that point.
HIT MAN works for me right up until it doesn't. It's coda really bothered me, waving away any moral ickiness that the climax brought up. There's a shot right before the coda that I wish Linklater would have ended on, which would have made for a more uncomfortable note to go out on that would have probably landed harder. Linklater's usually good with endings (Before Sunset might have the best final shot ever), so it's surprising he went with something so tidy (from what I understand, Netflix doesn't give notes).
I was surprised by the ending too, and kept waiting for the film to do something to subvert or at least complicate the resolution to Gary's journey. Everything in that final sequence is so Hallmark-channel tidy that I can almost believe that the tidiness itself is the subversion, and Linklater is trusting the audience to experience it as discordant. If so, though, I don't think it works that way.
That tidiness was what made me really mad about this movie (I’m a little more down on it than Kevin is). Loved the movie right up until the moral event horizon gets crossed when Gary doubles down with the plastic bag, then got really frustrated with the coda. Usually I’m not a “movies need to end in a way that aligns with my own moral code” kind of person, but that coda felt like a betrayal of the themes brought up in the classroom in the prologue.