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Home » Movies » Bollywood Movie Reviews

Hit: The First Case Movie Review: Rajkummar Rao Leads An Engaging Whodunnit That Deserved A Much More Nuanced Climax

Rajkummar rao needs his glory back where the entire movie somehow complimented his talent and hardwork..

Star Cast: Rajkummar Rao, Sanya Malhotra, Milind Gunaji, Shilpa Shukla, and ensemble.

Director: Dr. Sailesh Kolanu

What’s Good: Rajkummar Rao makes you believe in his world and that even the slight melo-drama is justified because of him is good. Also, half the plot is pretty amazing.

What’s Bad: The reward that we get after investing so much. It could have been more edged and layered.

Loo Break: The movie does get into the basic Whodunnit clichés, that is your time.

Watch or Not?: If you have seen the original, I have been told this is almost the same. If you haven’t, you can give it a chance or wait for its OTT release.

Language: Hindi.

Available On: In Theatres Near You.

Runtime: 135 Minutes.

A man named Vikram (Rajkummar) is suffering from PTSD due to past traumas and that is slowly killing him. When he takes a break from his police job, his girlfriend and a stranger girl disappear. The cop is back on duty and begins the movie.

HIT Movie Review: Script Analysis

How do you talk about a suspense thriller whose first frame in itself is a suspense without giving spoilers? I am going to try. Well, the main job of a whodunnit is to kind of turn its audience into pseudo-Sherlock Holmes and get on the journey with the film while holding them till the very end. The last film that managed to do it with full marks and a glorious reward was Sriram Raghavan’s Andhadhun and it’s already remade in all possible languages.

Hit: The First Case isn’t at par with Andhadhun, but isn’t very weak either. The premise of the movie is pretty strong and what adds the right flavour is Sailesh Kolanu’s screenplay. He is in no rush to tell you things because in his mind he is creating a franchise and he has a lot of time to tell his desires narrative. Now, I haven’t seen the original Telugu version, so I don’t know if the approach is same as the filmmaker is.

Sailesh’s writing is influenced by the Whodunnit that revolves around a case with no clues. But his style is highly influenced by the television form of drama and he kind of even brings that to his product. Like even the opening shot, and what follows. But he even somehow managed to make it all work and that is what is important. I won’t be able to explain further without spoilers.

Of course he resorts to clichéd plot lines and refuges at many points. He even goes on to point out many things around him. The fear of safety in women, the societal gaze and judgement over their choice of clothes and so on. But forgets to take those point to conclusion. What he also forgets is that when remaking, you can also rectifying or enhance your own product. Isn’t it kind of a second chance or boon? The climax and everything involved in it seems very lazy and half baked. Nothing out of it makes sense after a point.

There is a woman who does something just to seek attention like she has no idea law is a thing, police officers conducting lie detector test and narco test on the same day. If that isn’t enough, there is sudden change of heart between people who were legit fighting to kill each other 2 minutes ago. Also, every only keeps forgetting their accent and switching to normal Hindi all the time.

HIT Movie Review: Star Performance

Rajkummar Rao understands his assignment and does what his director wants from him. The actor by now has made a record of being the best part about mediocre films and maybe that has taught him to adapt to any ecosystem. Here he is amazing when he has to throw mean punchlines and also when real punches. But he forgets his accent a lot of times too.

Sanya Malhotra exists only to be kidnapped and found. It’s a cameo with no back story, just a conflict creator.

HIT Movie Review: Direction, Music

Sailesh Kolanu’s direction is hooking till the interval. Every reveal till then is moving and brings you to the edge of you seat. But in the second half the games changes and for bad. There is not much to be on the edge but you use the recliner to rest. Because you have seen all of it and can predict at least most of it. What is unpredictable is half baked so doesn’t make much difference.

Mithun’s music is good and might have a good recall value if it gets its audience.

HIT Movie Review: The Last Word

Rajkummar Rao needs his glory back where the entire movie somehow complimented his talent and hardwork. This is not it but is not entirely bad either.

HIT Trailer

HIT releases on 15 July, 2022.

Share with us your experience of watching HIT.

Want some good recommendation? Read our Rocketry: The Nambi Effect Movie Review here.

Must Read: Rashtra Kavach Om Movie Review: Aditya Roy Kapur Loses Memory In First 15 Minutes, Wish Same Happened With The Film’s Audience!

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HIT Movie Review: RajKummar Rao starrer will keep you hooked till the end with the intense drama

Saheli Maity

• July 15, 2022
• Comments off
• Bubble Reviews
• HIT Movie Review: RajKummar Ra ...

Film: HIT: The First Case:

Director: Dr Sailesh Kolanu

Star cast: Rajkummar Rao, Sanya Malhotra, Dalip Tahhil, Milind Gunaji, Shilpa Shukla, Sanjay Narvekar

HIT movie review: 

I personally enjoy thriller crime stories. It keeps you hooked and will make you want to know more about what will happen next. Good thriller stories grab your attention even though you’re busy solving the puzzles in your head. That sort of thing happened with RajKummar Rao and Sanya Malhotra starrer Hit: The First Case. Not for the sake of review, but I enjoyed the movie. It literally made me fold my legs up and made me bite my nails, trust me, this thing generally doesn’t happen with me. HIT which talks about a murder mystery was quite intense and intriguing. Yes, nothing is perfect in this world and hence, the film had flaws.

The film is actually the remake of a Telugu film (2020) with the same name starring Vishwak Sen and Ruhani Sharma. The film also marks some cliches like a lovey-dovey couple, the partner goes missing, the police officer does everything in his power to save her and then there’s a villain who has an ugly motive. The movie touches all the keynotes; however, the motive of the villain sort of irked me. The first half of HIT was quite enthralling but it was the second half that fell a little short as I could spot quite a few loopholes.

Some of the scenes were quite absurd and we’re unnecessarily added. Considering the second is already in the pipeline, HIT: The First Case leaves on a cliffhanger note. Hopefully, a lot of questions will be answered in the second part.

  View this post on Instagram   A post shared by RajKummar Rao (@rajkummar_rao)

An officer of the Homicide Intervention Team – HIT named Vikram goes on a mission to solve a missing case that is linked to her girlfriend Neha. Despite suffering from post-traumatic stress, he vents himself out into a non-comfort zone. Unfazed about his health and ignoring his doctor and girlfriend’s concerns, he continues to work which doesn’t make him question his own abilities. As he tries to solve the case and does everything in his power to rescue a woman and his girlfriend who went missing, Vikram gets severe panic attacks and blackouts. It showcases his journey from trying to cope with post-traumatic stress and doing his duty with utmost dedication. But will he solve the case? Will he be able to find his missing girlfriend?

Star Performances: 

Rajkummar Rao plays the role of homicide officer Vikram who is one of the best officers in the department. He deals with a dark past but tries hard not to get his past trauma to the present. RajKummar as the serious officer is simply fantastic. He is an earnest actor for sure. I could see no better actor than RajKummar to essay this character. He seemed to have literally sunken his teeth into the character and came out with glory. Just like his character, Rao captures the smallest of details of his character and flourishes them with finesse in the movie.

Sanya Malhotra essays the role of a forensic officer and the girlfriend of Vikram. She is seen in a cameo and makes her appearance in bits and pieces throughout the movie. I wish she had a significant role in the film. However, how much ever screentime she received, Sanya did a fair job.

The supporting cast like Dalip Tahhil, Milind Gunaji, Shilpa Shukla and Sanjay Narvekar have contributed their best to their roles and have given full justice. However, the character played by Shilpa seemed quite off and even unnecessary.

Direction/ Screenplay:

The film is written and directed by Dr Sailesh Kolanu who has also made the Telugu version of the film. I liked how he took his own sweet time to explain the characters without hurrying up. Sailesh very convincingly brings everyone into the world of Vikram which is completely traumatised and dark. I won’t say that the climax was epic nor will say it fell flat but it is quite laudable. Since it is not that predictable, it will keep you guessing and I guess, that’s the right note when watching a crime suspense drama.

Conclusion: 

Overall, HIT: The First Case narrates a gritty story of a homicide mystery which will surely keep you hooked till the end. Even though some of the glitches of the film are inevitable, Hit does make it a must-watch film. Nevertheless, if you’re a sucker for suspense, and crime drama, this movie could be on your watchlist. I will go with 3 stars and just so you know, it is RajKummar who stole the show in this intense thriller suspense.

Watch the Hit trailer after reading the movie review: 

Also read: EXCLUSIVE: RajKummar Rao on facing rejections for his looks: I was like what about acting, wo kisko chahiye

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HIT movie review: A riveting thriller with focused storytelling

Hit movie review: produced by actor nani, the film comes across as one of those thrillers that believe in an immersive experience more than relying on jump scares. vishwak sen is terrific as committed cop..

HIT Director : Sailesh Kolanu Cast : Vishwak Sen, Ruhani Sharma and Murali Sharma

In Telugu cinema, thriller happens to be one of the most underrated and unexplored genres. It’s hard to understand why not many Telugu filmmakers are keen to invest in the genre, but debutant Sailesh Kolanu’s HIT (Homicide Intervention Team) is a promising addition to the list. As a thriller, it busts quite a few norms associated with the genre – something as simple as twists don’t quite matter when you can build a taut thriller that never loses momentum. In building suspense and grim and taking it right till the end, HIT hits the ball out of the park.

The film is centered on Vikram Rudraraju (Vishwak Sen), an intelligent and committed police officer, who is coping from post traumatic stress and is advised to quit the force quite early on. Vikram has lost someone close, and the tragic incident triggers his panic attacks. After much contemplation, Vikram decides to take six months off from service but he promises to be available on phone whenever required. Two months into his break, Vikram is called to inform that his longtime girlfriend Neha (Ruhani Sharma), who works as a forensic officer, is missing. Vikram returns to force and as he starts investigating the disappearance of Neha, he realizes that the case is eerily similar to the disappearance of a young girl called Preethi, who went missing recently. As Vikram tries to connect the link between the two cases while dealing with his panic attacks, we are sucked into a world of crime and suspects.

HIT, which is produced by actor Nani, comes across as one of those thrillers that believe in an immersive experience more than relying on jump scares. It’s rare to come across such focused storytelling in Telugu cinema and HIT sets a strong example on how to achieve it. Unlike most thrillers, HIT doesn’t quite believe in the concept of a solid pay-off, which is why most might find the climax and the big revelation, slightly middling. It’s not a climax that leaves you on a high; nevertheless, it is a minor grouse which you can easily oversee when it comes to the overall riveting experience.

Also read: Shah Rukh Khan is the perfect husband as he visits wife Gauri’s store, gets clicked with her girl gang. Watch

The film doesn’t waste too much time on the crimes and its perpetrator; instead, it invests in its characters and effectively succeeds in building the mood and atmosphere. It’s well complemented by Vivek Sagar’s pulsating background score and the visuals of cinematographer Manikandan. Vishwak Sen is terrific in a role that’s easily his best so far in his career. As someone trying to cope with personal loss and fighting hard to stop another crime, he brings out the suffering and helplessness of his character convincingly. Finally, Nani deserves a pat for backing HIT, and willing to take risk and experiment. As an actor and star, he may like to play safe with his choices of films but he isn’t afraid to go against the grain as producer. The film ends with a hit of a sequel in the pipeline, and I really wish it gets made, for HIT as all the qualities to become a franchise.

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In Andrew Hyatt ’s “Sight,” what you see is what you get. The movie is a straightforward inspirational narrative based on a true story. There are very few surprises in store or moments that stand out beyond the predictable plot points and emotional scenes that play their hand a little too heavily. Without looking up its real-life parallels, you could probably guess where things were headed. For some viewers, this predictability is like comfort food from a chain restaurant. For others, it’s the equivalent of cinematic dental work. 

In “Sight,” Dr. Ming Wang ( Terry Chen ) was once a young man in China with dreams of following in his father and grandfather’s footsteps into the medical profession when an uprising during the Cultural Revolution changed the course of his family’s plans. Under pressure to leave the country after the disappearance of his first love, Lili (Sara Ye), Wang applies himself to his studies, earning top spots in universities like MIT and Harvard before creating his own practice treating eye ailments in Nashville, Tennessee. In 2007, he meets the soft-spoken Kajal ( Mia SwamiNathan ), a young Indian orphan in the care of nuns who travels to the US in the hopes of restoring her vision after surviving devastating abuse, and with the help of Dr. Misha Bartnovsky ( Greg Kinnear ), tries to help her against all odds. The film alternates between Wang’s past and then-present as he reconciles his earlier losses of love and country with his limits as a doctor. 

On reflection, “Sight” is a beat-by-beat wholesome biopic built to leave its audience feeling good and inspired by its sermon. Based on Dr. Wang’s biography,  From Darkness to Sight: A Journey from Hardship to Healing , the film is a meditation on faith, loss, and accepting the things one can’t change. It’s an American immigrant story that acknowledges the trauma of fleeing to a new country and how that may follow a person throughout their life. But that idea feels secondary to its overall message of finding one’s inner light in times of darkness. 

Driven by Dr. Wang’s compelling true story, “Sight” works fine as a movie on a mission from God to share a little story of grace with its audience. Chen’s performance is sometimes uneven, but his shared scenes with Kinnear as tired coworkers with different approaches to problem-solving are some of the movie’s best moments. Ben Wang , who plays Dr. Wang before his med school days, is also effective in the role of a young man lost in a sea of unrest and early heartbreak after Lili is taken from his side. However, the script, co-written by Hyatt with John Duigan and Buzz McLaughlin , moves slowly at times, almost as if wallowing in Dr. Wang’s pain in the two timelines of his story before resolving quickly to roll credits. 

While the movie is not terribly memorable, it is the latest evolution to the story of Angel Studios, the force behind “ Sound of Freedom ” and “ Cabrini ,” which also centered on a Christian (Catholic, to be specific) immigrant coming to America and helping others. While most studio branding is content with flashing a logo at the beginning of a movie and after the credits, “Sight” begins with the declaration, “This film has been approved by the Angel Guild,” a reference to the company’s membership program. During the credits, the real Dr. Wang appears to share his story and asks the audience to “pay it forward” by directing them to scan the on-screen QR code so donors can buy tickets for future moviegoers and enjoy exclusive access to deleted scenes. It felt weird for the tithe basket at the end of the movie to ask for support for the studio instead of Dr. Wang’s nonprofit sight restoration efforts after watching a movie about how his work has changed lives, but perhaps that’s more of a sign of our times.

Monica Castillo

Monica Castillo is a critic, journalist, programmer, and curator based in New York City. She is the Senior Film Programmer at the Jacob Burns Film Center and a contributor to  RogerEbert.com .

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Stomach churning violent all of which I could have endured if the drama and emotions had held but about an hour into the film loses his grip on the storytelling and he doesn’t get it back the director seems boted with blood and the sequences which follow become like hastily written connective tissue so that we can just go back to the killing The Killing continues this film runs for 203 minutes and 29 seconds so before stepping into the theater ask yourself what is your Threshold at the end of animal a female character throws up I’m not going to lie I felt the same

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Animal Story:

A son’s love for his father. Often away due to work the father is unable to comprehend the intensity of his son’s love. Ironically, this fervent love and admiration for his father and family creates conflict between the father and son.

Animal Release Date:

1 December 2023 in India

Animal Cast:

Ranbir Kapoor Anil Kapoor Bobby Deol Rashmika Mandanna Tripti Dimri

Animal Director: 

Sandeep Reddy Vanga

Animal Producer: 

Bhushan Kumar Krishan Kumar Murad Khetani Pranay Reddy Vanga

Animal Production Companies:

T-Series Films Bhadrakali Pictures Cine1 Studios

Animal Distribution Companies:

AA Films E4 Entertainment Sri Venkateswara Creations KVN Productions

Animal Run Time: 

3 Hour 21 Minutes (201 minutes)

Read More About Celebs: Salman Khan  |  Shahrukh Khan  | Aamir Khan  |  Ranbir Kapoor     Hrithik Roshan  |  Akshay Kumar

Rajeev Masand Reviews are awaited for this movie

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Qala Review : A haunting tale of validation and penance

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Seema David 47 277 days ago

Excellent movie. Refreshing one. A thousand times better than the 100 crore club movies. Watched it a few hours before and here i am! Still haunting!

Ram Thakur 95 497 days ago

Gem of a movie. Excellent direction, sterling performances by actors. Babil Khan makes an impressive debut. I see a promising career ahead of him. The apt use of Chamba folk song Ämma puchdi . . .", especially at the end of the movie.

M k 259 525 days ago

Underrated movie of 2022. Unique way of story telling started in India by this movie. Movie's cinematography is superb. This deserves more popularity.This musical movie gives vibes of the old songs .This movie has separate fanbase. Highly recommended movie

Rohit 63 532 days ago

Good Movie Nice and Well

Himanshu Chawda 1 533 days ago

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Hit Man review: Glen Powell delivers the movie-star goods in Netflix action comedy

W henever Glen Powell leans in, his eyes hungry and his smile upturned like an oxbow lake , he looks a little like his Top Gun: Maverick co-star , Tom Cruise. Or, at the very least, he exudes that same sense of concrete intent, performed with the easy confidence of flicking a cigarette butt across a dive bar floor. It’s said that franchise cinema killed the movie star. But Powell could certainly pass as one, and it’s all on display in Netflix’s Hit Man , which he co-wrote and produced with director and longtime collaborator Richard Linklater , who gave him roles in Fast Food Nation , Everybody Wants Some!! , and Apollo 10 1⁄2: A Space Age Childhood .

In Hit Man , Powell stars as Gary Johnson, a real-life guy whose undercover operations were very different from what we see on screen (as the film stresses). This Gary is a humble dweeb. A professor of psychology and philosophy at the University of New Orleans, he comes home from a long day of being bullied by his students for driving a Honda Civic to feed his bird and two cats, Ego and Id. But he’s content and has a tidy side gig working tech on the local police’s sting operations, catching would-be murderers by having a cop (Austin Amelio’s Jasper) pose as a low-rent hitman.

As Gary’s narration points out, the idea of a readily attainable rent-a-killer is pure Hollywood bull, a naive fantasy of a quick (if ethically troublesome) fix to life’s most stubborn problems. But, clearly, it’s a tempting prospect to some, and when Gary is suddenly asked to step into Jasper’s role, he becomes fully invested in transforming himself into other people’s ideal saviours. At one point, it’s a full-blown impression of Christian Bale in American Psycho , glossy skin and all. At another, it’s a refined British flavour of sociopathy that’s shades of Tilda Swinton.

Powell’s transition between identities plays like a magic trick, with Gary as the genuine Clark Kent ruse, his square-jawed handsomeness hidden behind a slicked-down side part, wireframe glasses, and terrible posture. Hit Man also works as proof of Powell’s versatility: he’s goofy and sweet one minute, tough the next. And, when Gary finds himself falling head over heels in love with one of his targets, Adria Arjona’s Maddy, Powell turns on the charm like a blowtorch, in a way that proves that all the buzz around his chemistry with his Anyone But You romcom co-star Sydney Sweeney wasn’t empty social media talk.

Maddy hires Gary’s hitman, now a leather-jacketed, GQ cover star-type called Ron, to take out her abusive husband. But the sincerity of her plight leads Gary to warn her off a potential life behind bars and instead strike out on her own. Soon enough, they’re embroiled in a highly charged affair that’s all the more sexy for the many lies upon which it’s built.

Arjona matches Powell’s passions, while Linklater, with a touch of his signature nonchalance, sprinkles in a few of Gary’s classroom musings on whether people can truly change. The director’s films, from Dazed and Confused to the Before trilogy, have always been concerned with how we can find our place in this world. In Hit Man , Powell can transform so readily, that answer seems to be wherever we like.

Dir: Richard Linklater. Starring: Glen Powell, Adria Arjona, Austin Amelio, Retta, Sanjay Rao. 15, 115 mins

‘Hit Man’ is in cinemas from 24 May, and streams on Netflix from 7 June

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'Atlas' review: Jennifer Lopez befriends an AI in her scrappy new Netflix space movie

Just when you think you’ve seen everything, here comes a movie where Jennifer Lopez tries to out-sass a computer program.

Jenny from the Block is in her Iron Man era with “Atlas” (★★½ out of four; rated PG-13; streaming now on Netflix ), a sci-fi action thriller directed by Brad Peyton ( “San Andreas” ) that pairs two hot commodities: a pop-culture superstar and artificial intelligence.

The movie shares aspects with a bevy of films like “Blade Runner,” “The Terminator,” "The Iron Giant" and “Pacific Rim,” and it’s best to not think too hard about the science involved. Yet there’s a scrappiness to “Atlas” that pairs well with a human/machine bonding narrative and a fish-out-of-water Lopez trying to figure out how to work a super cool, high-tech armored suit and not die spectacularly.

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But “Atlas” doesn’t have the best start, beginning with the mother of exposition dumps: In the future, AI has evolved to a dangerous degree and a robotic terrorist named Harlan (a charmless Simu Liu) has turned genocidal, wanting to wipe out most of mankind. He’s defeated and retreats into space, vowing to return, and in the ensuing 28 years, counterterrorism analyst Atlas Shepherd – whose mother invented Harlan and made him part of their family before he went bad – has been trying to find him.

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She’s distrustful of Al and also most humans: The antisocial Atlas’ only true love is coffee but she’s also crazy smart, and she figures out the galaxy where Harlan’s hiding. Atlas forces herself on a military space mission run by a no-nonsense colonel (Sterling K. Brown) to track down Harlan, but amid a sneak attack by cyborg bad guys, Atlas has to hop in a mech suit to survive. The caveat: to run the thing, she has to create a neural link with an onboard AI named Smith (voiced by Gregory James Cohan).

Streaming preview: 15 new movies you'll want to watch this summer, from 'Atlas' to 'Beverly Hills Cop 4'

Obviously, there’s a climactic throwdown with Harlan – you don’t need ChatGPT to figure out the predictable plot – and there are plenty of action scenes with spotty visual effects. But “Atlas” cooks most when it’s just Atlas and Smith, sniping and snarking at each other: He fixes her broken leg, her cursing expands his vocabulary, and slowly they figure out a way to coexist and become a formidable fighting unit. 

Lopez does well with the buddy comedy vibe as well as her whole "Atlas" character arc. The fact that she starts as a misanthropic hot mess – even her hair is unruly, though still movie star-ready – makes her an appealing character, one you root for as she becomes besties with a computer and finds herself in mortal danger every five minutes.

While “Atlas” doesn’t top the J. Lo movie canon – that’s rarefied air for the likes of “Out of Sight” and “Hustlers” – it’s certainly more interesting than a lot of her rom-com output . Her action-oriented vehicles such as this and the assassin thriller “The Mother,” plus B-movie “Anaconda” and sci-fi film “The Cell” back in the day, show a willing gameness to venture outside her A-list box.

It also helps when she finds the right dance partner – in this case, a wily AI. And in “Atlas,” that unlikely friendship forgives the bigger glitches.

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If Glen Powell’s Not Already a Star, This Movie Will Make Him One

This review was originally published on September 7, 2023 out of the Venice Film Festival. We are recirculating it timed to Hit Man ’s release in theaters.

“How many of you really know yourselves?” Philosophy lecturer Gary Johnson (Glen Powell) posits this question to his University of New Orleans class early on in Richard Linklater’s Hit Man . “What if your self is a construction, an illusion … a role you’ve been playing since the day you were born?” It turns that he’s about to become a walking answer to the question. It’s a wild story that an opening title tells us is “somewhat true”: Johnson (a real guy) worked for a while for the New Orleans Police Department as a fake hit man for its sting operations, arriving at arranged meetings wearing a wire and then getting the suspects to incriminate themselves by obtaining his services.

An amiable, Honda Civic–driving, bird-watching Everyman in shorts and glasses, Gary somehow turns out to be the perfect fake assassin. “You have this unreadable face,” a colleague tells him. “Perfectly forgettable.” He only gets the gig at a moment’s notice because the usual guy got caught beating up some teens and got himself a 120-day suspension. But Gary’s a natural: He walks into his first meeting anxiously reminding himself that he’s a killer and somehow convincingly transforms into a badass as soon as he meets his mark. It’s not unlike the scene in Collateral where Jamie Foxx’s mousy cabbie has to pose as Tom Cruise’s stone-cold assassin and suddenly becomes a new man. There’s more than a bit of Cruise in Powell’s performance here, in fact. (One wonders if some of that magic movie-star dust rubbed off while they were making Top Gun: Maverick together. Powell, it should be noted, has a co-screenwriting credit on Hit Man .) But it’s not so much the white-haired killer of Collateral as the driven, smiling, fresh-faced icon of the ’80s and early ’90s. If Glen Powell’s not already a star, this picture might well make him one.

It’s a movie-star role because it is at heart a fantasy. As Gary tells us, hit men are, by and large, a myth. Why should a total stranger risk death row to kill your business rival or heartless spouse or whatever for money? Gary is effectively playing a figure out of our collective imagination. And on some level, that liberates him. He researches his clients beforehand and tailors his look for their expectations of a hit man: a neck tattoo here, an overcoat there, sometimes dark glasses, sometimes an accent. He can make up the character as he sees fit because the people he’s playing quite simply don’t exist.

Then, of course, he meets a girl: Madison (Adria Arjona), a terrified wife being tormented by an unstable, domineering husband. She tries to hire Gary, but he’s so taken with her that he slyly convinces her to give up on the idea because he doesn’t want to see her go to prison. Soon, they’re smitten with each other — only she thinks he’s still “Ron,” the grizzled, open-collared killer who showed her some genuine compassion and threw in a bit of impromptu life coaching.

And Gary sort of thinks he’s Ron, too. Or at least, he becomes Ron whenever he’s with her, so much so that he’s now a demon in bed. (“I was once told I think too much to be a good lover,” he reflects. “I like Ron. He’s not a thinker. He’s a doer.”) He also has the instincts of a tougher guy when they’re together. When Madison’s estranged husband spots them at a club and threatens them, Gary immediately pulls out a gun, Clint Eastwood–style, and backs the guy off.

We get a giddy thrill watching Gary transform because he seems like such an unexceptional person at first. Hit Man works simultaneously as an indulgence in and a deconstruction of the basic transaction of stardom: It presents us with a guy we can never be, then makes us believe for a moment that we can be him, even as it tells us that such a guy doesn’t exist in the first place. But Linklater’s amiable filmmaking and Powell’s charming, self-aware swagger are infused with the idea that anything is possible. They make the whole world seem open, malleable, and accepting. As Gary tells his class, “If the universe is not fixed, then neither are you.”

A lot of very dumb things have been said about the auteur theory in recent years, all of which ignore its beautiful central tenet, which is that some filmmakers’ sensibilities shine through their work no matter the material. Linklater’s breeziness and generosity as a director haven’t always worked to his advantage — I can think of a couple of earlier efforts that could have used a darker, more exacting eye — but here, they work wonders.

If one were in the habit of playing artists off one another, one could even say that Hit Man serves as a rebuke to the other hit-man movies at Venice this year — to the self-conscious portent of David Fincher’s The Killer , or the graphic tedium of Harmony Korine’s Aggro Dr1ft . All of these filmmakers are well aware of the tiredness of the genre they’re working in and are trying to poke holes in it, each in his own way. But only Linklater’s feels genuinely fresh. He’s having fun, his star is having fun, and they allow the audience to have fun as well. Which in turn makes the picture’s overt philosophical digressions, in the form of Gary’s lectures to his classes, equally easygoing and lively. Linklater’s gentle touch is his secret weapon, and Hit Man might be a masterpiece.

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Movie Review: ‘The Garfield Movie’ is a bizarre animated tale that’s not pur-fect in any way

This image released by Sony Pictures shows characters Odie, voiced by Harvey Guillén, from left, Vic, voiced by Samuel L. Jackson, and Garfield, voiced by Chris Pratt, in a scene from the animated film “The Garfield Movie.” (Columbia Pictures/Sony via AP)

This image released by Sony Pictures shows characters Vic, voiced by Samuel L. Jackson, right, and Garfield, voiced by Chris Pratt, in a scene from the animated film “The Garfield Movie.” (Columbia Pictures/Sony via AP)

This image released by Sony Pictures shows Garfield, voiced by Chris Pratt, in a scene from the animated film “The Garfield Movie.” (Columbia Pictures/Sony via AP)

This image released by Sony Pictures shows characters Jon, voiced by Nicholas Hoult, clockwise from left, Vic, voiced by Samuel L. Jackson, and Garfield, voiced by Chris Pratt, in a scene from the animated film “The Garfield Movie.” (Columbia Pictures/Sony via AP)

This image released by Sony Pictures shows characters Jon, voiced by Nicholas Hoult, left, and Garfield, voiced by Chris Pratt, in a scene from the animated film “The Garfield Movie.” (Columbia Pictures/Sony via AP)

This image released by Sony Pictures shows characters Odie, voiced by Harvey Guillén, left, and Garfield, voiced by Chris Pratt, in a scene from the animated film “The Garfield Movie.” (Columbia Pictures/Sony via AP)

From left, Chris Pratt, Hannah Waddingham, Garfield and Jim Davis attend the premiere of “The Garfield Movie” on Sunday, May 19, 2024, at TCL Chinese Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Hannah Waddingham, right, poses for photographers during a photo call for the film ‘The Garfield Movie’ on Friday, May 10, 2024 in London. (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP)

Katherine Schwarzenegger Pratt, left, and Chris Pratt arrive at the premiere of “The Garfield Movie” on Sunday, May 19, 2024, at TCL Chinese Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Chris Pratt arrives at the premiere of “The Garfield Movie” on Sunday, May 19, 2024, at TCL Chinese Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Hannah Waddingham arrives at the premiere of “The Garfield Movie,” Sunday, May 19, 2024, at TCL Chinese Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

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If you catch the latest Garfield movie, you might not expect to find the famous orange feline at one point running from bad guys on the top of a speeding train. Lasagna eating? Sure. But any sort of cardio?

Then prepare for “The Garfield Movie,” a curious new animated attempt to monetize the comic icon again by giving him an origin story and then asking him to do things a galaxy away from what he does in the funny pages. It’s like if Snoopy ran an underground bare-knuckle fight club.

Chris Pratt voices the Monday-hating, self-centered hero and Samuel L. Jackson animates his long-lost father, who abandoned Garfield in an alley one rainy night, leading to lifelong trauma. That may explain his endless appetite, to fill the void of parental neglect. What does “The Garfield Movie” say about that idea? Are you kidding?

“The Garfield Movie,” directed by Mark Dindal, reunites Garfield and his not-so-savory dad — there’s no mention of a mom and there are shades of the plots from “Kung Fu Panda 3” and “Chicken Run” — as he gets caught up in a criminal plot to raid a corporate dairy and steal thousands of gallons of milk.

Sorry, what was that? Garfield is perhaps the most indoor cat in history and seeing him dodge massive chopping blades or boulders onscreen is just plain weird. Making it even weirder is that his partner Odie — traditionally a drooling idiot — is remade here as highly competent, perhaps even a savant. This is not canon.

The movie gets mildly amusing as it recreates the kind of vent-crawling, security guard-avoiding heist in the dairy along to the theme from “Mission: Impossible” and that’s largely because the gang is being directed by a bull voiced by Ving Rhames, a veteran of that franchise. There are also nods to “Top Gun”: I do my own stunts,” Garfield says. “Me and Tom Cruise.”

The script — by Paul A. Kaplan, Mark Torgove and David Reynolds— grounds the movie firmly in today, with Garfield using food delivery phone apps and Bluetooth, watching Catflix and characters declaring that they are “self-actualized.” There’s also some pretty awkward product placement, like for Olive Garden, that may not send the message they wanted.

This is the part when we talk about food abuse. Garfield has a bit of a problem on this front, and the filmmakers more than lean into it. Thousands of pounds of junk food get inhaled by the tabby, but not salad. Heaven is described as an “all-you-can-eat buffet in the sky” and cheese is Garfield’s “love language.” It’s the laziest kind of writing.

From left, Chris Pratt, Hannah Waddingham, Garfield and Jim Davis in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

There’s a mini “Ted Lasso” reunion when Hannah Waddingham (playing a psychotic gang leader) and Brett Goldstein (as her henchman) appear, while Snoop Dogg has a cameo as the voice of a one-eyed cat and offers a song that runs over the credits.

The animation is pretty great — the backgrounds, at least. Ladders show rust and forests are lush, but then the main characters are a step or two less realized, more cartoonish. Jim Davis, who created Garfield, is an executive producer so he must be OK with all of this, a forgettable, unfunny animated slog. At one point, Garfield says “Bury me in cheese” and that seems a fitting final resting place for this cat’s film career.

“The Garfield Movie,” a Columbia Pictures release that opens in movie theaters Friday, is rated PG for “mild thematic elements, action and peril.” Running time: 101 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.

MPAA Definition of PG: Parental guidance suggested.

Online: https://www.garfield.movie

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

Linklater’s ‘Hit Man’ deserves to be a hit, man

Glen Powell stars in a delightfully dark comedy that should make him a marquee name.

“Hit Man” is opening in theaters Friday and premiering on Netflix two weeks from now. You can watch it on the streaming service, of course, but the movie’s director, Richard Linklater, really wants you to watch it in a movie theater, and, honestly, so do I. A blast of pure pleasure and one of the year’s best films, “Hit Man” should be seen with a crowd grooving on its devilish comic energy, its off-the-charts sexual chemistry and the star-making turn at its center.

That star is Glen Powell, who’s been bumping up toward better things over the past few years, from the motormouthed college ballplayer in Linklater’s “Everybody Wants Some!!” (2016) to Tom Cruise’s rival in “Top Gun: Maverick” (2022) to romancing Sydney Sweeney in last year’s mush-brained romantic comedy “Anyone But You.” He has the lead in the “Twister” sequel due in July, but the whip-smart “Hit Man” is the one that should do the trick. Wit, sex appeal and crack comic timing — Powell’s got it all.

For that matter, so does his co-star Adria Arjona (“Andor”), but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Based very loosely on a true story, “Hit Man” casts Powell as Gary Johnson, a contentedly nerdy psychology professor at the University of New Orleans who moonlights as a technical adviser for police sting operations. When Jasper (Austin Amelio), the sketchy undercover cop who usually plays the fake killer-for-hire, is suspended, Gary is drafted to take his place at the last minute; to everyone’s surprise, including his own, the mild-mannered academic has a gift for posing as an ice-cold assassin. Soon he’s the department’s main “hit man,” changing his dress, hair and attitude for each of the lowlifes who are willing to pay to have someone removed. As Gary explains, hit men don’t much exist outside of the movies, but people fantasize that they do, and his job is to become the fantasy. “I had the knack,” he says, “of being the person they needed me to be.”

A movie like this has to have a complication, and in “Hit Man,” the complication’s name is Maddy (Arjona), a smoldering sweetie pie with an abusive husband (Evan Holtzman) whom the planet would really be better off without. That’s what she says, anyway, and maybe it’s true. When she meets Gary, who’s posing as a slick, affable professional killer named Ron, what starts as a business meeting turns into a date before either is entirely aware of what’s happening. It’s at this point that the movie shifts into a delightful second gear, as Gary’s — excuse me, Ron’s — attraction to Maddy, and hers to him, starts gumming up the works and adding layers to the imposture. Everyone seems to like Ron more than Gary — even Gary.

Beyond that, I can tell you no more, other than to say that “Hit Man” piles one twist upon another until we’re as unsure as Gary about which person he’s pretending to be, and for whom. To give the movie ballast, his day job in the classroom allows for some light philosophizing, Gary throwing his students curveballs like, “What if your self is a construction, a role you’ve been playing since you can remember?”

Fine, but this is first and foremost an entertainment, one made by people working at the top of their game while having the time of their lives. Linklater is one of our best, most independent-minded filmmakers, and every now and then, he drops the formal experiments of “Boyhood” or the “Before Sunrise” trilogy to turn out something perfectly commercial, like “School of Rock” or “Dazed and Confused,” just to remind us that he can. “Hit Man” isn’t commercial in the strict modern Hollywood sense — there’s no CGI and no chase scenes, and not a single gun is fired (on-screen, anyway). But the script, co-written by the director and the star, is the kind that flatters an audience’s senses of intelligence and humor, and the central romance isn’t just ridiculously hot but funny and sweet — two people sparking to each other’s rhythms as they reveal themselves step by step.

Which, of course, is a lie, since there’s more than enough pretending to go around. The gamesmanship between Ron and Maddy ultimately leads to a blissfully funny scene where the impostures and playacting acquire the stature of three-dimensional chess, with cellphone cues and an audience of law enforcement listening in. It’s one of those sequences you play back in your head after the movie is over, just to figure out how they did it.

The backcourt of “Hit Man” is stacked with talent as well, from Amelio’s lanky, live-wire sleazeball of a bad cop to Retta and Sanjay Rao as Gary’s deadpan associates in the sting operation, agreeing between themselves that they’d probably sleep with Ron if they had the chance. Everyone’s so likable, in fact, that it’s not until the movie’s over that you may realize you’ve been waltzed into an awfully dark ethical corner. You can talk about that on the drive home, too.

Goosing it all along is a soundtrack of rolling New Orleans R&B, heavy on the Dr. John, Professor Longhair and a sublime Allen Toussaint cover version of “Cast Your Fate to the Wind.” Appropriate title, that, since “Hit Man” is a fable about making it up as you go along, until you realize that you stopped being you about 10 miles back.

R. At Alamo Drafthouse Cinema DC-Crystal City and the AFI Silver Theatre. Available June 7 on Netflix. Contains language throughout, sexual content and some violence. 115 minutes.

Ty Burr is the author of the movie recommendation newsletter Ty Burr’s Watch List at tyburrswatchlist.com .

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga has all the trappings of a prequel that exists to milk a hit movie. Does that matter?

For a 45-year-old franchise that began as a scuzzy, low-budget exploitation movie set in a near-future Australia, George Miller's Mad Max series has extracted a surprising amount of mileage from its rusty tank of guzzoline.

Like any vintage model, though, it's also starting to show some signs of wear and tear in the chassis.

Directed with age-defying vigour by the 79-year-old Miller, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is the series' fifth and latest instalment, and a prequel to 2015's widely beloved, Oscar-winning hit Mad Max: Fury Road.

By most measures of action-movie mayhem, Furiosa is a raging good time — but it's also the first film in the series that feels like it's spinning its wheels, at a loss for new ideas to match its execution.

Though conceived in tandem with Fury Road, Furiosa has all the trappings of a prequel that exists to milk a hit movie by filling in backstory — whether or not audiences were exactly clamouring for it.

Just how did Imperator Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron in the previous film, come to acquire her fearsome cybernetic arm? What was the reason for her buzzcut, anyway? How did she come to be in the employ of the monstrous Immortan Joe, and hatch a plan to betray him? (Admittedly, the arm bit is a doozy.)

At its best, Furiosa is less concerned with answering these questions than exploring the cycle of violence inflicted upon successive generations — a theme that's writ large, if not always elegantly, in its simple tale of revenge.

For the adolescent Furiosa (a wonderful Alyla Browne), the seeds of that violence are sown when she's kidnapped from her lush, verdant homeland and delivered into the clutches of Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), a warlord who rides a three-motorcycle chariot as he leads his army of scavengers across the Wasteland.

As played by a broad, mugging Hemsworth — complete with prosthetic nose and goofy Australian accent — Dementus isn't the least bit terrifying. The star is far too amiable to be convincingly grotesque, though you're never quite sure when he might snap.

He's certainly not above drawing and quartering his enemies by stringing their limbs to motorbikes, and he's plenty sadistic when confronting Furiosa's mother (Charlee Fraser, whose face was made to fill the movie's stark, widescreen vistas).

Dementus also has crackpot designs on overthrowing the Citadel, the fortress run by Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) and his knucklehead sons Scabrous Scrotus and Rictus Erectus (it's a relief to know Miller's juvenile sense of humour hasn't changed) — which goes about as well as you might expect.

It's soon an all-out war between madmen, with Furiosa caught in between; she's traded into Immortan Joe's service as a future bride, biding her time to exact vengeance.

If Furiosa is too polished to summon the desperation of the earlier Mad Max films, then there's something endearing about Miller's commitment to the series' core spirit, which remains essentially loud, feral and a little bit sentimental.

A sense of hope, however twisted, has always run through the series, and Furiosa — played in the film's second half as a young woman by Anya Taylor-Joy — is one of Miller's most expressive, emotionally rich creations, an avatar of survival against post-apocalyptic adversity.

In a performance of few words (she only has about 30 lines in the whole film), Taylor-Joy gives the Furiosa its blast of star power, bringing the kind of silent-movie intensity the series hasn't seen since Mel Gibson wandered off into the sunset back in the 80s.

For all its sound and fury, many of the film's more memorable moments are its most simple: images of its star set against the vast, elemental landscape, or framed like Joan of Arc on a gate that resembles a burning cross. Taylor-Joy pops against the dirt and grime and the ochre desert, against the grotesque Australian masculinity that has long been the series' gleeful stock in trade.

It's hard not to be entertained by it all, especially when Miller and his stunt team have a monster tow-truck menacing a V8 in a tense chase snaking across the sand dunes, or when they unfurl a parachute that looks like an alien jellyfish bearing down on an oil tanker.

But the storytelling dictates of a prequel appear to have shrunk Miller's vision. The movie's greatest villain isn't Dementus, or even Immortan Joe — it's that shady spectre we might call the Great Expositor, whose love of backstory is scarier than any grill-faced gimp with a chainsaw.

Where each of the previous films introduced new ideas, or progressed the story and theme, Furiosa is more or less content to lap the same premise.

Fury Road already had the whiff of a beefed-up, re-recorded greatest hits set; Furiosa merely recycles the off-cuts, albeit with the best equipment in the game. The series' once-durable mythology is at risk of becoming a brand extension.

In another sense, Furiosa might be said to come full circle to the series' 1979 original, a movie steeped in carnage and loss that set off a cycle of violence from which its hero could never completely escape. (There's even a shot here that mirrors, and up-ends, the first film's grisly image of Max's wife being run down by bandits.)

Yet what was once spare and brutal has become cluttered and over-extended — even if the soul is still there, rattling around somewhere in the engine.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is in cinemas now.

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