Glen Powell as Gary Johnson in Hit Man (2023)
Vitals
Glen Powell as Gary Johnson, mild-mannered psychology professor moonlighting as an undercover police contractor
New Orleans, Fall 2022
Film: Hit Man
Release Date: May 24, 2024
Director: Richard Linklater
Costume Designer: Juliana Hoffpauir
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
After a limited two-week run in theaters, Hit Man debuted on Netflix at the beginning of this month and quickly became the service’s #1 most-watched movie in the U.S. The screenplay by director Richard Linklater and star Glen Powell fictionalizes the life of Gary Johnson, a college professor and successful “fake hitman” whose undercover police work led to more than 70 arrests of people seeking the services of a contract killer.
Hit Man is Linklater’s second cinematic depiction of stranger-than-fiction true crime based on a Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth (the first was Bernie in 2011), though the production and setting were moved from Houston to New Orleans to take advantage of Louisiana tax credits.
Described in the epilogue as the “chillest dude imaginable,” the real Gary Johnson—whom the same epilogue is sure to insist was never actually involved in any murders—died in 2022 at the age of 75 before getting to see this dark comedy that riffed on his life story.
Though sensationalizing his life for dramatic purposes, Hit Man includes many details from Johnson’s life, like his cats Id and Ego, his unassuming politeness, and the random opportunity that elevated him to the city’s most in-demand assassin who signals his identity to prospective clients with a single response phrase:
All pie is good pie.
What’d He Wear?
Gary’s interest in human psychology makes him particularly suited for his new role as a “full-blown murder-stopper,” as his ex-wife Alicia (Molly Bernard) calls him, adapting his personality and appearance to suit each potential client’s ideal hitman before meeting them in costume with a wiretap ready to capture them incriminating themselves after crossing “that psychotic Rubicon.”
He maintains a solid record of success until he’s sent to meet the alluring Madison Figueroa Masters (Adria Arjona), who believes the only escape from her abusive husband is to have him killed. As “Ron”, the hitman he tailored to appeal to Madison’s personality and history, he pivots from trying to get her to incriminating herself into talking her into helping herself. At first, the worst is that Gary merely sabotaged the arrest to help the damsel in distress… but then Madison reaches back out to the “hitman” who led down a more wholesome path, and the two begin to fall for each other—and over their own heads.
Costume designer Juliana Hoffpauir perfectly illustrated the depths of Gary’s transformations, whether depicting himself as a tattooed hillbilly killer, a pastiche of Patrick Bateman, or even a sinister Tilda Swinton. While Gary Johnson had been an affable if somewhat awkward college instructor who tucked his baggy polos into jorts and wore socks with sandals, “Ron” is a cooler-than-ice contract killer—a cowboy in all black, save for the leather jacket with a worn patina suggesting he’s seen a thing or two about a thing or two. The persona proves especially appealing, not just to Madison and his swooning detective handlers, but also to Gary himself.
The next time someone tells you clothes don’t matter, consider the choose-your-own-adventure scenario of the man in jorts eating leftovers with his cats vs. the man in black and a cool leather jacket.
“The jacket is like Gary’s armor as Ron. We couldn’t do a flight or bomber jacket because Glen’s already done that [in Top Gun: Maverick]. The Ron character is more like Glen—confident, sexy, playful—so the jacket also had to be something comfortable for Glen,” Hoffpauir explained to Chris O’Falt for IndieWire. “Whenever he put that [jacket] on he was Ron. That suede leather jacket had these green tints that hinted towards the swamp (because he references the swamp a lot). Green to me, it felt [a little] animal and nature, it just screamed masculinity to me.”
The Jacket
Juliana Hoffpauir outlined the specifics of her costume design for Gary’s “Ron” persona on Instagram, anchored by the well-worn Flynt Western “Presidio” trucker jacket she thrifted from Hollywood South Costumes. The stock Flynt Western jacket features a lightly sanded sueded leather body, hand-colored to a “toffee” brown that was over-dyed prior to the production to a color that Hoffpauir describes as “swamp green”, though the collar, cuffs, pocket flaps, and waistband retained their stock smooth brown leather finish.
The design echoes the iconic trucker jacket style, with two flapped chest pockets and a lower pair of vertical-entry hand pockets. A pair of vertical seams run down each side from the straight horizontal chest yoke down to the waistband. The jacket closes with five brass-toned rivet buttons up the front, plus a single matching button through each pocket flap, a single button to close each squared cuff, and short adjustable tabs that close through one of two buttons on each side of the waistband.
The Texas-based label Flynt Western has embraced their jacket’s role in Hit Man, offering 10% off for shoppers who input Gary’s confirmation code at checkout: ALLPIEISGOODPIE.
The Shirts
The first we and Madison see of “Ron”, he’s seated in a booth at the decades-old Please-U Restaurant, enjoying his usual pie. Layered under the jacket, he wears a black shirt overlaid with a triple-striped white grid. Described by Hoffpauir as a vintage Arrow shirt, this long-sleeved shirt has black buttons up the plain front and to close each cuff.
One of Gary’s most frequently worn shirts as “Ron” is the black denim Billy Reid “Shoals”, which the southern U.S.-based label describes as a “mainstay in our collection for over two decades”. The shirt is made from a “soft yet sturdy” 7.25-oz. over-dyed cotton denim, detailed with antique brass snap-buttons and light-brown contrast stitching along the edges, including the horizontal yoke extending across the upper back; unlike many western-inspired snap-front shirts, there are no front yokes.
The two chest pockets have a pointed bottom as outlined by the contrasting stitch that follows the shape of the entire pocket, including two upward-facing parallel lines stitched just inside the left edge of the left pocket, representing Billy Reid’s signature “heirloom ribbon”. The pockets are covered with asymmetrical flaps that flare out to a single snap positioned over the point that skews closer toward the center of the shirt. The seven brass snaps up the front placket and single snap on each pocket flap are a flat antique brass, contrasting with the squared cuffs that each close with a single black-ridged brass snap forged to resemble the brand’s aforementioned heirloom ribbon.
When “Ron” and Madison meet again at the dog volunteerism event, he layers the Billy Reid shirt open over a black ribbed cotton sleeveless undershirt.
Gary again wears the black denim Billy Reid shirt—this time sans undershirt—during the climactic sequence during which Claudette (Retta) and his detective handlers send him into Madison’s apartment to entrap her into admitting she killed her husband. Note the distinctive double lines embroidered over the left seam of the left pocket.
During his day-to-day life romancing Madison, “Ron” only slightly softens his look with a rotation of long-sleeved henley shirts, some of the few garments that crossover between this alter ego and his actual life as Gary Johnson.
We first briefly see a brick-red henley with a three-button top as he’s leaving Madison’s apartment one morning, followed by a dark-gray henley that he wears when he’s greeted by his new girlfriend role-playing as a seductive stewardess for Madison Airlines. This latter henley has a slightly longer five-button top, extending past mid-chest.
On the pivotal, pistol-packin’ day that begins with “teaching” Madison how to shoot her new .38 to the couple’s confrontation with Ray (Evan Holtzman) outside the nightclub Virgo’s, “Ron” wears a black self-striped shirt from Western heritage brand Ely Cattleman, likely made in their “Easy Care fabric” blend of 65% polyester and 35% cotton.
The shirt follows the traditional Western design with its pointed front yokes, six pearl-finished snaps up the front placket with a traditional sew-through button at the neck, and snap-fastened cuffs that Gary wears unfastened and rolled up to his elbows. The two chest pockets are covered by pointed flaps that each close with a single pearl-finished snap.
Everything Else
As he cycles through his shirts, Gary always wears the same black denim Wrangler five-pocket jeans that maintain Ron’s “bad boy” man-in-black persona. Typically, I try to avoid the uniformity of wearing shirts and pants in the same color, but “Ron” makes it work with his characteristic swagger, Glen Powell’s lean 6’0″ frame, and his regular habit of offsetting the monochromatism with his olive-tinted leather jacket. He holds up the jeans with a black leather belt that closes through a large silver-toned squared single-prong buckle.
Hoffpauir completed Ron’s western-inspired wardrobe with a set of exotic cowboy boots, specifically Tecovas‘ hand-lasted caiman-belly “The Dillon” boots dyed to a “midnight” black. “Part of the alligator family, caiman showcases statement-making scales that have a distinct depth of texture,” describes the Tecovas website. These round-toed boots have hand-corded calfskin 12″-high shafts and leather outsoles boasting Goodyear welt construction and 1½” angled heels.
At one point, Gary does wear his personal blue jeans over to Madison’s house when warning her that her ex-husband has been searching for a hitman himself, but they’re not as canonically part of his image as the black jeans.
For his first interactions with Madison, “Ron” maintains an air of mystery from behind a set of nickel rectangular-framed aviator sunglasses, framed by an austere bar that maintains a straight line across both of the smoky blue lenses. Hoffpauir sourced the specs from the Burbank-based Gimme Props Eye Wear.
On the ring finger of his right hand, our lone-wolf killer “Ron” wears a distinctive gold-plated ring stamped with a “Call of the Wild” scene depicting a gold wolf howling up at the moon (represented by a small diamond) against a black-painted backdrop broken up only by the silhouettes of narrow trees emerging from the silver-plated landscape.
Rather than his usual Apple Watch on its brown leather strap, “Ron” takes a queue from one of cinema’s most iconic killers by strapping on an Omega, specifically a blacked-out Omega Speedmaster “Dark Side of the Moon” chronograph.
Omega launched the “Dark Side of the Moon” series in 2013 as a modern interpretation of the iconic “Moonwatch” Speedmaster chronographs sported by NASA astronauts during their lunar missions of the 1960s, updated with cases, crowns, dials, and pushers made entirely of black, gray, and white ceramic. Of these models, Gary appears to wear the “Pitch Black” ref. 311.92.44.51.01.004, characterized by Super-LumiNova details inspired by “the mystique of the Earth’s nightlight and its ever-changing yet constant presence.” (Gary’s lifestyle evidently makes him good enough money to invest in his props, as even the lowest-priced Dark Side of the Moon Speedmasters like his “Pitch Black” model retail for $12,800 new!)
Powered by Omega’s Co-Axial calibre 9300 self-winding automatic movement, Gary’s “Pitch Black” Speedmaster features the standard 44.25mm case, machined from a single block of polished black ceramic. The brushed black ceramic bezel is detailed with a Super-LumiNova tachymeter scale. Under scratch-resistant sapphire crystal, the polished black ceramic dial—and its twin sub-dials at the 3 and 9 o’clock positions—feature Super-LumiNova-coated non-numeric hour indices and hands. The black non-grained calf leather strap has ecru edge-stitching and a ceramic foldover clasp.
The evocative “Dark Side of the Moon” nomenclature of Gary’s blacked-out Omega Speedmaster harmonizes with Ron’s lone-wolf persona as illustrated on his ring.
“Ron” wears a thin silver curb-chain necklace with a silver 22mm pendant depicting an ouroboros—the ancient symbol depicting a serpent eating its own tail that Hoffpauir significantly chose for its representation of “destruction and rebirth,” which is indeed Gary’s increasingly high-stakes relationship with Madison that results in his eventual rebirth as a changed man. This is reinforced by the French inscription flanking the ouroboros, “La fin depend du commencement,” which translates in English to “The end depends on the beginning.”
As confirmed by the company’s Instagram, Powell’s screen-worn necklace is the Pyrrha “Knowledge” talisman, cast in 100% recycled sterling silver. Named for a figure in Greek mythology, Pyrrha is a certified B Corp based in Vancouver that specializes in meaningful and sustainably crafted jewelry, inspired by the beautiful imperfections of Victorian wax seals.
The Guns
“Ron” may be a fake hitman, but he still gets his hands on a few firearms. The sequence outlining the “obligatory training” Gary needed to undergo as a police contractor illustrates that he’s hardly Carlos Hatchcock with a Glock, but he’s able to deflect situations that would reveal this to potential clients—first by telling a trap-shooting potential client that he doesn’t need the extra practice and then by pulling Madison’s target to within nearly an arm’s reach to present a more realistic (and, for a novice, attainable) version of his sharp-shooting skills.
If that’s a range officer watching Gary from behind the glass, he’ll likely have more than a few angry words about Gary firing without safely looking down range and while someone else is in the booth with him.
Accompanying Madison to a firing range is exactly the sort of thing he would have typically avoided, lest he be uncovered as a phony, but she was insistent after demanding that her hitman boyfriend show her how to fire her new handgun, a blued steel Smith & Wesson Model 36 fitted with black rubber Pachmayr “Compac Grips”.
This classic snub-nosed revolver debuted during the 1950 International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) convention, where the attendees voted on its initial “Chiefs Special” nomenclature until Smith & Wesson began numbering its models later that decade. Though chambered in the same venerable .38 Special round fired by older “belly guns” like the six-shot Colt Detective Special, the Model 36 distinguished itself with a five-round cylinder that sacrificed a single round for a flatter profile that made it ultimately lighter and more concealable.
When Claudette mentions that Madison’s ex-husband had been killed by “a .38”, Gary tries to hide his internal horror as he remembers that her new Model 36 would have been chambered in .38 Special.
Gary tosses Madison’s Smith & Wesson Model 36 on her couch, giving us an eyeful of a weapon that even firearm neophytes could likely describe as a .38.
Perhaps to enhance Ron’s image as a dangerous hitman, Gary begins carrying his own handgun, a decision that initially ends—then drastically elevates—the situation when Madison’s ex-husband Ray confronted them outside Virgo’s. (I’m not totally sure where he would have concealed the pistol, as he had his jacket off inside the club and kept his shirt tucked in; and he draws the pistol far too swiftly for it to have been in a tuckable IWB holster under his shirt.)
The boxy profile of Gary’s semi-automatic pistol suggests a Glock, albeit modified with a threaded barrel and a removed front sight—a curious combination as many operators opt for an enhanced front sight to ensure that it wouldn’t be rendered useless by the addition of a suppressor. There’s also the possibility that, as a non-violent civilian (lest we forget he isn’t an actual hitman), it’s not meant to be a real gun at all, which would account for some of the more curious aspects of its appearance.
“Apologize, motherfucker!”
The Car
The real me is a people person, I like to have a good time. But to be most effective in this job, I have to be a bit of a lone wolf. I have to never draw any attention to myself. I don’t anyone to remember my face, I don’t want to over- or under-tip, I don’t want to be pulled into memorable conversations. That’s why I drive a Honda Civic… I want it to seem like I don’t exist.
Hit Man puts considerable attention on the fact that Gary drives a Honda Civic, from a snickering student’s remarks to “Ron” himself providing the aforementioned rationale during his first date with Madison. Gary’s light silver 2006 Honda Civic is a smartly uncreative choice for the man we meet at the start of the movie, who—like the tens of millions of others who launched the Civic to become one of the best-selling cars worldwide—almost certainly valued its affordable practicality and reliability over anything flashy.
How to Get the Look
Gary presents “Ron” as an elevated execution of the quintessential cool guy—dressed in all black aside from a worn-in leather jacket with western flair and badass accessories that remind anyone in his path that he’s not the kind of man to be trifled with… the sartorial opposite of jorts with socks and sandals!
Glen Powell as Gary Johnson in Hit Man (2023)
- Olive-dyed suede trucker jacket with brown leather collar, five brass-toned rivet buttons, two flapped chest pockets (with single-snap brown leather flaps), vertical-entry hand pockets, single-snap brown leather cuffs, and brown leather waistband (with snap-tab adjustable straps)
- Flynt Western “Presidio”
- Black cotton long-sleeved western-style shirt with snap-up front placket, two chest pockets (with single-snap flaps), and snap-closed cuffs
- Billy Reid “Shoals”
- Ely Cattleman
- Black ribbed cotton sleeveless undershirt
- Black cotton five-pocket jeans
- Wrangler
- Black leather belt with large silver-toned squared single-prong buckle
- Black caiman-belly round-toe 12″-shaft cowboy boots
- Tecovas “The Dillon”
- Nickel-finished rectangular-framed aviator sunglasses with smoky blue lenses
- Sterling silver ouroboros talisman necklace on sterling silver curb-link necklace
- Pyrrha “Knowledge”
- Gold-plated “Call of the Wild” ring with a blacked-out backdrop of a gold wolf howling at a diamond moon amidst silver trees
- Omega Speedmaster “Dark Side of the Moon” ref. 311.92.44.51.01.004 “Pitch Black” ceramic chronograph with 44.25mm case, Super-LumiNova tachymeter bezel, and black dial (with Super-LumiNova indices and two black sub-dials) on black edge-stitched calfskin leather strap
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie, currently streaming on Netflix.
The Quote
Chivalry may be dead, but I didn’t kill it.
The post Glen Powell in Hit Man: Gary’s Western-Inspired Wardrobe as “Ron” appeared first on BAMF Style.