A star was born on May 27, 2022, when Top Gun: Maverick began its first bombing run on the American box office. It bore out to be a soaring lap of honour for famed ubermensch Tom Cruise, with his ascension to Lord King of Cinema, first of his name, saviour of the aisles, destroyer of streamers and devourer of movie tickets. But who was that at the back of the flight class, with his perennial smirk and marble chiselled God-face?
Glen Powell, of course — Hollywood's newest hot guy onscreen. If Maverick served as a convincing test run for his star bonafides, his box office smash Anyone But You made it clearer he was one to watch. Here comes the one to cement his leading man status: Richard Linklater's twisty new rom-com Hit Man, now in cinemas and coming to Netflix on 7 June, anoints him as among the Timothées and the Pattinsons in the pack of superstar here-to-stays. Imagine sticking all of the big rom-com actors you can think of from the past three decades — Cruise, McConaughey, et al. — in a blender and setting it to blitz. Fine, it might take the unattainable cutting edge of modern science to return the resultant glass of gore to human form, but turn that man-smoothie back into an actual man, and you've got Powell.
He also picks his movies well, because Hit Man is both rom-com enough to bring in the masses and not-rom-com in that there's something going on between its ears. Here's the premise in brief: Powell plays a New Orleans cop who discovers a talent for keeping his cool undercover, and parlays this into a role as the force's undercover-cop-in-chief. He takes to playing the role of a murderer for hire, which sounds morbid, but is mostly played as a joke, with Hit Man making a point of how vanishingly rare movie-style contract killers are in the real world. Most of his would-be clients chicken out at the last minute. That is until he meets Adria Arjona's Maddy Masters, who seeks the death of her deadbeat, abusive husband. Such are the demands of the rom-com gods, the two get it awn, and work becomes play. This turns into a problem we will not spoil, but it's a twisty, sharply written hoot.
The biggest compliment you could pay Powell two years ago, then largely known for Netflix's biggest rom-com hit Set It Up, is that paired with the most bankable test-tube movie star on the planet, he just seemed like he should be there. Such is his status as a living, walking Hollywood archetype: he's so preternaturally hot and charismatic, with his Handsome Squidward jawline that could smash diamonds into a fine powder, that superstardom feels his divine right. Our Pavlovian reflex is to look and swoon, and then to rush to the closest multiplex — or, at least, in the case of Hit Man, to that towering red N on our smart TVs.
Perhaps this is something to do with how he calls back to the Hollywood heartthrobs of the ‘80s and ’90s. In a new age of headlining twinks and brooding boys with dark eyes, Powell offers muscularity and, well, refreshing hunkiness. What he doesn't bring with him is the baggage of traditional masculinity that often weighed down those red-blooded stars. He's the synthesis of old and new. It's also appropriate, then, that his next project is Twisters, a throwback to the disaster movies that Hollywood doesn't go for nowadays without Dwayne Johnson at the top of the bill. In the trailer, his jocular, jockish cowboy euphemistically talks up the thrill of “riding” tornadoes — in case there was any doubt that this man is not aware of his own sexual currency, and how to wield it on the road to ubiquity.
But first, Hit Man. Film lovers on Twitter threw a conniption fit when it was announced that Netflix had bought it, thereby meaning that this crowd-pleaser — which had my audience at the Venice Film Festival in utter hysterics throughout — would be largely seen without a crowd, aside from a short window where it'll be in cinemas. It's a great movie to see with other people, but most movies are, and Netflix has over 250 million subscribers. In today's day and age, when most people go to the cinema once or twice a year, there might not be a better place to pour jet fuel on a movie career. When Glen takes to the throne after the coming summer of Powell, one can't imagine he'll have many regrets.
Hit Man is now in cinemas, and will stream on Netflix from 7 June.