Hit Man

If watching him outrun tornadoes opposite Daisy Edgar-Jones in last summer’s “Twister” legacy sequel didn’t fully sell you on Glen Powell’s leading-man charms and potential to become the kind of megawatt star you can build a franchise around, allow us to make a bid for his magnetic performance in this genre-bending rom com-thriller by Richard Linklater.

The 36-year-old actor-on-the-rise hits all the right notes and oozes effortless charisma as Gary Johnson, a meek philosophy teacher who earns an extra dime posing undercover as a fake hitman. All seems well at first, but things get a tad complicated when Gary finds himself entangled with one of his targets and decides to break protocol during a police sting operation to talk a woman (a smokin’ hot Adria Arjona) out of a hit on her abusive husband.

It’s a crying shame that this TIFF sleeper hit ended up being completely buried by the Netflix algorithm and got nowhere near as many eyeballs as it deserved. Had it been released in theaters and marketed properly, it would’ve likely played like gangbusters with a crowd, and perhaps even picked up enough steam down the road to make some noise this awards season.