Why Doesn’t ‘Hit Man’ Acknowledge that Gary Johnson is on the Spectrum?

To mask or not to mask?

I’m sure you’ve already heard about Netflix’s breakout success Hit Man directed by Richard Linklater, or that we are entering a ‘Summer of Glen’ as Glen Powell receives the respect he deserves: lest we forget Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, or that the movie is based on a true story about Gary Johnson (played by Powell), a philosophy professor who worked undercover for his local precinct as a fake hit man. There is no question that all of these aspects scream box (couch) office darling and to be clear, I enjoyed Hit Man. It’s fun, it’s comical, and it’s sexy. But the more I thought about the movie’s overall message that anyone can find their true self if they commit to change, the more confused I was by the erasure of Johnson’s neurodivergence.

Glen Powell as Gary Johnson in Hit Man

According to the Cleveland Clinic, neurodivergence describes people whose brains develop or work differently for some reason. Neurodivergence can manifest itself in many different ways, but there are some common attributes that, you guessed it, Johnson exhibits pretty clearly in the movie. Johnson has a wide array of niche and hyper-focused interests such as birding, surveillance tech, and philosophy, he struggles to communicate and understand other’s social cues and emotions, repeatedly confirmed by his two coworkers at the precinct who make fun of him for this, and he shows a detailed and novel attention to the ways in which others, aka “normal” people, be…