The Golden Globe nominations are here and some exciting things have happened. While I loved seeing Sebastian Stan nab a double nomination for his work in The Apprentice and A Different Man, my favorite nomination of the day goes to Glen Powell’s performance in Hit Man.
Powell was nominated in Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for his work as Gary Johnson in the Richard Linklater film. Powell, who had quite the year with Anyone But You carrying over from a December 2023 release date and leading into the release of both Hit Man and Twisters in the same year, is a first time nominee.
Hit Man tells the story of Gary as he works with the police department to catch people who are trying to hire a hit man to commit murders for them. When he meets Madison (Adria Arjona), Gary let’s his hit man persona of “Ron” take over and cloud his judgement. Was I expecting a romantic comedy with murder? No I was not but it made me love every single second of the Linklater film.
Powell plays a number of hit man personas in the film and each one is more unique than the last. It is one of the more impressive performances of this year. Yes, I’m impartial to his performance as “X,” the Patrick Bateman-esque persona. But seeing Powell switch between them all with Gary bubbling under the surface makes Hit Man such a fascinating watch. Well, that and it IS fun watching Ron and Madison falling in love with each other.
The Golden Globe nomination for just Powell’s performance is beyond worthy. To be fair, I think Hit Man is one of the best movies of this year but his nomination is exciting.
I hope he gets a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination eventually
What makes Hit Man also really amazing is that Powell adapted the screenplay with Richard Linklater. Based on the real story of Gary Johnson, the two took the story from an article in Texas Monthly by Skip Hollandsworth. So there is a world where Powell can be nominated for Best Actor as well as Best Adapted Screenplay.
That’s what I am hoping for because I do think the script for Hit Man is very impressive. It is one thing to take the Texas Monthly story and turn it into a movie. What Linklater and Powell did was create a beautiful love story between two people who are the definition of two people who “match each other’s freak.”
It is a great year in movies and there are a lot of performances and movies I thoroughly enjoyed. But there is just something about Hit Man that has really stuck with me and I hope that Powell’s Golden Globe nomination is just the beginning. Because, if it were up to me, I’d give him all the awards for that Patrick Bateman impression. For now, I can just hope that he’ll also get recognized for the screenplay with Linklater at some point this award season.
Published: Dec 9, 2024 04:07 pm