Richard Linklater’s Hit Man has one of those perfect movie premises. Glen Powell (who co-wrote the film with Linklater) plays a lonely college professor named Gary who stumbles into a second job for the local police aiding in sting operations. While he starts off helping with their surveillance equipment, the cops later draft him into impersonating a hit man in order to snare a man who wants to hire someone to carry out a killing on his behalf.

Gary turns out to be so convincing as a pretend hit man that the police use him over and over in that role until the day he’s forced to play assassin for a beautiful woman named Madison (Adria Arjona) who wants him to bump off her abusive husband. Gary instantly falls for Madison, and their secret relationship immediately complicates both his professional and personal lives because Madison thinks she is romancing a handsome, fearless killer and not a shy psychology teacher.

The story takes several improbable but highly entertaining turns from there, to the point where it seems impossible that the film could be based on a true story — except Hit Man ends with a title card that reveals it is based on an article from Texas Monthly. So is this one of those cases where truth is stranger than fiction?

Not quite. Hit Man is based on a Texas Monthly article, but it definitely takes a fair amount of dramatic license in turning the original story into a sexy, funny thriller. Read on to learn the full details of what really happened.

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