By Alistair Harkness

Published 22nd May 2024, 04:30 GMT

Hit Man (15) *****

The Garfield Movie (U) **

Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (15) ***

Richard Linklater is such an assured filmmaker it can sometimes feel like he’s barely doing anything at all behind the camera, but you only have to compare his effortlessly cool new film Hit Man to recent disaster The Fall Guy to see what a masterful director he really is. Where that film was a mess of annoying references, mindless action and simulated movie moments, Hit Man takes its titular movie trope, turns it on its head, and uses it to facilitate one of the sexiest and funniest romantic comedies in years (a low bar to be sure, but still…).

Co-written with star Glen Powell (re-uniting with Linklater after Everybody Wants Some!!), this “somewhat true story” revolves around Gary Johnson (Powell), a divorced philosophy professor who spends his spare time moonlighting for the New Orleans Police Department as a tech-ops assistant, helping them set up wiretaps for sting operations in murder-for-hire cases. This normally means sitting in the van monitoring video and audio feeds while his undercover colleague Jasper (Austin Amelio) poses as an assassin to get a confession of criminal intent on tape. But when the odious Jasper is suspended for inappropriate use of force, Gary is drafted in at the last minute to take his place and, to everyone’s surprise (including his own), unleashes his inner Daniel Day Lewis, improvising hilariously gruesome details about body disposal and gradually building up a raft of alter egos tailored to whichever disgruntled spouse, employee or family member he’s trying to put away.

Powell is an absolute joy here, in large part because Gary’s transformation slyly reinforces his own emergence as a leading man. Like his Top Gun: Maverick co-star Tom Cruise during his 1980s heyday, Powell gets the chance to unleash his own latent movie-star charisma and the results are electric – particularly as Gary lands on Ron, the ultra confident and charming badass he concocts to meet potential suspect Madison (Adria Arjona – sensational). She wants Ron to bump off her abusive husband, but her commitment to this task gets sidelined almost immediately by the nuclear reactor-style heat they generate whenever they look at each other and, later, tear each others’ clothes off (something they do with increasing frequency).

Though hitman films have proven fertile ground for relationship comedies before (see Grosse Point Blank or Mr & Mrs Smith), Linklater puts his own spin on this niche sub-genre. Using Gary’s philosophical digressions to tease out the themes in playfully brainy ways, he also taps into the swooning, head-over-heels reverie of Before Sunrise/Before Sunset, channelling that energy into a sexy, screwball, noir-inflected rom-com, one full of twists and turns that poke fun at movie conventions, yet still deliver a supersized hit of wish fulfilment fantasy.

The Garfield Movie – the latest big screen incarnation of Jim Davis’s beloved comic strip creation – sees the eponymous, lasagne-loving orange tabby not only getting an origins story, but a modern make-over in the form a newfound penchant for home delivery apps. This is actually the source of the films’s only vaguely amusing gag: a montage celebrating all the ways technology has helped Garfield (now voiced by Chris’s Pratt) amp up his greed and lethargy.

As was the case wit the previous Bill Murray-voiced live action films, the source material’s ability to concisely execute a gag in three panels doesn’t lend itself to narrative expansion and the new film over-eggs things further with a father-son redemption story and a heist plot in which a vengeance-seeking kitty (voiced by Hannah Warrington) kidnaps Garfield and his dopey canine companion Odie in order to coerce Garfield’s long-lost ne’er-do-well father (Samuel L Jackson) into ripping off an impregnable dairy farm.

Borrowing heavily from the likes of Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit adventure The Wrong Trousers, it’s as if the filmmakers couldn’t be bothered and decided to drop Garfield into a generic animation adventure story – which may be the most Garfield thing about it, given the the way this cat has historically extolled the virtues of laziness.

An old-school 1980s-set Hong Kong action film should be catnip for genre fans who grew up on John Woo or found their way into Asian cinema via newer cult faves like Gareth Evans’ The Raid movies. Frustratingly Twilight of The Warriors: Walled In doesn’t quite live up to the promise of its confined setting and bone-crunching fight choreography.

That setting is Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled City, a rabbit warren of densely populated high-rises, semi-legitimate businesses and rampant criminal activity that was torn down in 1994 but has been lovingly recreated here as a squalid, decaying frontier city with its own laws – a place so insular the Triads can’t even get a foothold on the action. That’s sort of good news for the film’s protagonist, Chan Lok-kwun (Raymond Lam), a Chinese immigrant street fighter in need of refuge after being double-crossed by Triad boss Mr Big (Sammo Hang). Broke and broken, he’s taken under the wing of Kowloon’s own crime boss Cyclone (Louis Koo), but his position is complicated by a generation-old conflict and Mr Big’s determination to get some payback.

Sadly these plot strands eventually trip up the film with ludicrous coincidences, elaborate flashbacks and the arrival of one invincible villain whose super-power-like abilities director Soi Cheang never bothers to explain. (It also doesn’t help that the film serves up a slightly sentimental view of life in Kowloon). Up until this point, though, there’s a lot of entertainingly orchestrated mayhem.

Hit Man is in cinemas from 24 May and streams on Netflix from June 7; The Garfield Movie and Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In are on general release from 24 May.

Film reviews: Hit Man | The Garfield Movie | Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In