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People like to speak about a golden era of movies—the precise dimensions of which often shift based on the generation of the speaker—when Hollywood made products that were sexier, smarter, and just generally better. Richard Linklater ’s “Hit Man” is for them. 

Like its protagonist’s ability to basically change identities depending on the situation, it’s a film that knows what its clients need, shifting from comedy to romance to thriller to a philosophical study of the human capacity to change. It’s one of the smartest films in years, a movie that’s reminiscent of everything from classic noir to the smooth delivery of  Steven Soderbergh ’s “ Out of Sight ” in its willingness to be damn sexy and morally complex at the same time. Don’t miss this one.

Very loosely based on a true story, “Hit Man” stars Glen Powell (who also co-wrote this stellar script with Linklater) as Gary Johnson, a New Orleans-based professor who has been assisting the police department with menial tasks like planting bugs and connecting wires in the surveillance van. When a slimy undercover agent named Jasper ( Austin Amelio ) gets suspended for 120 days for some violence involving teenagers—one gets the impression it probably should have been much longer—Gary is forced to step in and improvise on the job. It turns out he’s really good at it, convincing a sleazebag named Craig ( Mike Markoff ) that he’s a professional killer by detailing his technique when it comes to body disposal. Gary’s colleagues (memorably played by Retta and Sanjay Rao ) suggest that the mild-mannered cat lover and bird watcher should be their new undercover hit man.

Gary takes his new assignment very seriously, researching the people asking for a murder for hire in a way that makes them more likely to hand over the money. His ability to shape himself into the right man for the job could even be read as a bit of a meta-commentary on acting itself—he’s playing dress up, but he’s also doing the same kind of research and character work that Powell himself has done for dozens of roles. And, of course, Gary’s personality gamesmanship reflects his teachings about philosophy, not only in how his background allows him to read people but in how the different characters change Gary himself.

And that’s when Ron enters the picture. When Madison ( Adria Arjona ) tries to hire a hit man, she meets Ron (aka Gary) in a diner called the Please U Café—like so many choices in Powell & Linklater’s blindingly smart script, even that name doesn’t seem accidental. Ron listens to her story about her abusive husband, Ray, and he makes the sudden decision to save Madison from herself. Take the money you were going to spend on murder and start a new life. It’s only one of many beats in the back half of “Hit Man” that’s a bit morally ambiguous. What if Madison just goes and hires someone else, and someone ends up dead? So much of what follows, as Ron/Gary and Madison begin a romantic relationship, will have viewers wondering what they’re supposed to be rooting for to happen next.

That’s part of the unpredictable brilliance of “Hit Man.” So many movies telegraph their plot twists and underline their moral messages. “Hit Man” does none of that. If you asked a dozen people to guess where it was going at the halfway mark, or even where they  want it to go, you’d get 12 different answers. Linklater & Powell’s script constantly stays one step ahead of the viewers, making us eager to see what happens next and often surprised by what unfolds. I’m not sure it all adds up without loose plot threads, but it’s so wildly entertaining to take this twisting journey that it doesn’t matter.

It’s also sexy as Hell. The first scene between Powell and Arjona feels like a bolt of lightning, given how rarely we see actual screen chemistry in modern movies. Hey, look, it’s two people being movie stars . Their instant chemistry becomes the foundation for the back half of the movie as what was kind of a goofy comedy shifts more into thriller and even noir, genres that allow for a bit of moral ambiguity. Without spoiling, “Hit Man” goes to some pretty daring places narratively where other filmmakers and studios would have headed for more predictable moral waters. “Hit Man” recalls noirs and thrillers in which we rooted for the leads to get away with relatively heinous acts in the name of entertainment and didn't think about the repercussions.

That last thought might make “Hit Man” seem like little more than a lark. It’s not. This film will be underrated in its complexity, a study of how easy it is to become what we pretend we are. It’s about how we like to define people by their jobs, or even if they’re a cat or dog person, but one of the great things about humanity is our ability to surprise even ourselves. (Powell is SO good at selling the improvised choices that Gary makes in a way that's essential to the film's success.) It’s a deceptively well-made flick that appears to be Linklater in little more than his “let’s have fun” mode. But it can’t keep one of the smartest filmmakers of his generation from elevating everything that this movie is trying to do with remarkable depth.  

The truth about “Hit Man” is that the golden era people long for would have made this movie a smash, the kind of hit that turns Glen Powell and Adria Arjona into household names. That's what I miss in that I sometimes wonder if some of my favorite movies of the past would even be noticed by the content algorithm in 2024. This one is getting a brief theatrical run before landing on Netflix, where good films too often get buried. Don’t let that happen here. Or they really won’t make this kind of movie anymore.

In limited theatrical release tomorrow, May 24 th . On Netflix on June 7 th .

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Hit Man (2024)

115 minutes

Glen Powell as Gary Johnson

Adria Arjona as Madison 'Maddy' Masters

Austin Amelio as Jasper

Retta as Claudette

Sanjay Rao as Phil

Molly Bernard as Alicia

• Richard Linklater
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‘Green Border’ Review: Migrants’ Elusive Race for Freedom

Agnieszka Holland focuses on the Polish-Belarusian border as a Syrian family tries to make it to the European Union.

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By Manohla Dargis

The fury that radiates off Agnieszka Holland’s “Green Border” is so intense that you can almost feel it encasing you in its heat. A brutal, deeply affecting drama set against the migrant crisis in Europe, it is the latest from this great Polish director, a filmmaker whose eclectic résumé includes several films about the Holocaust, a romance starring the young Leonardo DiCaprio as Arthur Rimbaud and episodes of the HBO series “The Wire” and “Treme.” One of the pleasures of Holland’s work is that you never know exactly what to expect; all that is certain is that it will always be worth watching and that, for her, art is a moral imperative.

A fiction firmly rooted in fact, “Green Border” dramatizes the crisis through different players — migrants, guards and activists — converged in and around the border of Poland and Belarus. There, in the so-called exclusion zone, an area that’s off-limits to most, migrants largely from the Middle East and from Africa try to enter the European Union via Poland. In this haunted, contested, dangerously swampy slice of land, men, women and children, families and friends, struggle to traverse national boundaries while evading and at times enduring violence from armed patrols.

Divided into numbered sections, the movie opens on a crowded plane (it seems to be from Turkey) where the discreet, hovering camera pans across different passengers, their faces masked and unmasked, anxious and introspective. The camera soon settles on a tense Syrian husband and wife, Bashir and Amina (Jalal Altawil and Dalia Naous), who are traveling with his father (Mohamad Al Rashi as Grandpa) and the couple’s three children. When their eldest, a sweet preadolescent boy named Nur (Taim Ajjan), asks the woman seated between him and the window if they can trade places so he can take in the view, this small circle opens. Enter Leila (Behi Djanati Atai), a middle-aged Afghan gutsily making the journey alone.

It’s crucial to Holland’s convictions, I think, that the first plane passengers you see aren’t actually members of this little group. Holland doesn’t go in for overexplanation in her movies. Rather, during this one’s brief, minimalist title sequence — it opens with an inviting aerial view of a lushly green forest that soon turns black and white as “Green Border” materializes onscreen — the words “October 2021 Europe” appear, followed by “1. The Family.” (The black-and-white palette remains, which fits this Manichaean world even as it points to the past.) As the movie then cuts from one passenger to the next, from young to old and from adult to child, it soon seems evident that, for Holland, the freighted word family isn’t limited to a chosen few.

Holland sets a brisk pace in “Green Border” that begins rapidly accelerating once the plane touches down. After it lands — the flight attendants hand out roses to the passengers, welcoming them to Belarus — Bashir’s family piles into a van that his brother in Sweden has hired. The family plans to join him; for her part, Leila, who hops in too, is hoping to stay in Poland. All the travel plans have been arranged in advance; routes have been charted, drivers hired, bags packed, cash spent. A great deal more money will pass from hand to hand by the end of “Green Border,” a movie in which each life carries a steep price tag.

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Green Border Review: Riveting Monochrome Thriller Captures Europe's Crisis with Grace

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Green border is a crisis divided into chapters, players involved: from jan to julia.

• Green Border offers a gritty, documentary-like aesthetic that immerses you in the border crisis without sugarcoating the harsh reality.
• The film weaves together multiple storylines, including a family from Belarus, a pregnant guard, and a therapist-turned-activist, creating a thought-provoking narrative.
• With a balance of suspense, occasional humor, and dynamite performances, Green Border challenges viewers to confront the refugee crisis with empathy and action.

It's not called the "green" border for monetary reasons. Nope, there are no fiscal promises here. Rather, false promises of guaranteed freedom. For her latest crowning achievement, director and co-writer Agnieszka Holland – who has been nominated for multiple Oscars (for Angry Harvest, In Darkness , and Europa Europa ) – uses her platform of expertise to explore the swampy forests between Belarus and Poland. More specifically, Green Border follows a series of refugees who dare to approach the territory with hopes of leaving the Middle East and Africa behind and ultimately reaching the European Union. The worst part? It's all a ruse, a propaganda-laced predicament allegedly orchestrated by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko in an attempt to provoke Europe.

Don't let the film's black-and-white visual aesthetic fool you into thinking this is some vintage history piece. The story takes place only two years back, in the year 2022, and the desaturated look is an artistic choice that highlights the morally challenging statements the film makes about the events and horrors we witness. Green Border is a politically charged and thought-provoking feature that might still haunt you days and weeks later.

Green Border

In the treacherous and swampy forests that make up the so called 'green border' between Belarus and Poland, refugees from the Middle East and Africa trying to reach the European Union are caught in a geopolitical crisis triggered by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. In an attempt to provoke Europe, refugees are lured to the border by propaganda promising easy passage to the EU. Pawns in this hidden war, the lives of Julia, a newly minted activist who has given up her comfortable life, Jan, a young border guard, and a Syrian refugee family intertwine.

• Dynamic performances from everyone involved.
• A documentary-like aesthetic adds to the realism of the performances, making Green Border feel like a seminal document.
• The film expertly balances moments of suspense, hope, and utter cruelty.
• Multiple storylines and many characters, across a long runtime, can create narrative confusion.

Holland divides her tale into chapters, though the wraparound story centers on a family from Belarus that can't seem to catch a break, to put it mildly. The lovable clan is led by patriarch Bashir (the excellent Jalal Altawil) alongside his own elderly father (Al Rashi Mohamad), among others – including innocent children who are simply oblivious to the crisis and related horrors that surround them. As the title suggests, they're headed for the border.

Watch out for a chilling and unforgettable scene at a refugee camp they end up at, where the family politely asks the guards for some water, to which the guards reply by demanding an absurd sum of money, snatching their wallet aggressively, and dumping out the water the family already had. Awful stuff, and Holland dares you to imagine that this is just one of countless similar tragedies the migrants at the Belarus-Poland border have had to endure.

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If the verbal assaults on this poor family is hard enough to stomach, then watching them fling themselves over barbed wiring and other impossible physical obstacles is a whole separate beast. It's all captured on film, up close and personal, to thrilling and unnerving effect, and at times, you might catch yourself thinking, "Wait, is this a documentary?" There's a whole border crisis of our own happening between the U.S. and Mexico at the moment, and the swampy "green" nature of the border in Holland's powerful new film proves that border crises are international and only getting worse.

Once we've seen enough of Bashir's unparalleled troubles at the border opposite Polish guards and increasingly harsh precipitation from above, the story moves on to Chapters 2 and 3, introducing us to composite characters on opposite ends of the crisis spectrum. There's young, handsome guard Jan (Tomasz Wlosok), a Harris Dickinson lookalike with a pregnant wife at home and an unfinished house he's too lazy to renovate before the baby arrives.

And it's too bad he won't get the reno done – because that leaves the property open for migrants to squat in when he's not around and off patrolling the green border with a scary rifle in hand. His morally centered character arc is a bit predictable, but no matter: Jan is a thrill to watch as he becomes increasingly rattled on a mental level by the horrid job he's required to do each day. And yes, in an ensemble piece like Green Border , as we've learned with past classics like Short Cuts (1993) and Magnolia (1999), Jan's journey may eventually intertwine with other characters we've already met...

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Then there's Julia (the superb Maja Ostaszewska), a Polish stay-at-home therapist-turned-activist who ditches her cozy, Zoom-friendly lifestyle for the sake of the greater good, as they say. She's darn good at her job as a psychologist, as we gather when we first meet her in one of her virtual therapy sessions, but once she witnesses down the street what's going on near the border, she can't help but get involved to help those less fortunate. That means teaming up with already-seasoned activists like Marta (Monika Frajczyk) and Zuku (Jasmina Polak), a pair who are a hoot to watch and even laugh-out-loud funny at times as they bicker about their day-to-day strategy for aiding the hopeless refugees and more.

It's a cruel world we live in, particularly if your life happens to cross paths with a crisis like the one explored in Green Border , and you may want to escape this world with sugary entertainment, which is more than fine. But this is can't-miss cinema that has the Criterion Collection written all over it. Sure, it might run too long for some and be a bit too politically charged for others , but we say "buckle up" and embrace the crisis. You'll learn a thing or two and may even be inspired to take action to help in some way. From Kino Lorber, Green Border begins playing in select theaters on June 21 .

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'Green Border' is the strongest movie this critic has seen all year

John Powers

Agnieszka Holland's film, which won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival, centers on a refugee family trying to escape to Western Europe and the people who try to help and stop them.

Copyright © 2024 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

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Green Book (2018)

Green Book Review

Every time I see a movie like “Green Book,” I wonder how many more stories about overcoming racism Hollywood needs to tell. And then I glance at the news and realize it’s apparently a lesson that audiences keep needing to learn.

Directed by Peter Farrelly -- one half of the gentlemen responsible for “Dumb and Dumber" and “There’s Something About Mary") -- he indulges in the duo’s proclivity for road movies but otherwise restrains himself from turning the true story of a Jamaican classical pianist being driven through the 1960s Deep South by a foul-mouthed Italian bouncer into an unsuitably raunchy, lowest-common-denominator comedy. Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen, as passenger and driver, respectively, form an occasionally discordant but ultimately satisfying pair as their characters’ real-life adventure offers a canny reversal of many of the tropes of movies about learning to see past skin color.

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