I didn’t really warm up to “Hit Man,” a glib comedy about a freelance police surveillance technician pressed into service as a fake murderer-for-hire to entrap people conspiring to have someone killed.

Its efforts to find “cute” and “charming” in a romance between this fake killer and a woman who wanted to hire him fall flat. The many disguises and guises trotted out by star and co-writer Glen Powell as a New Orleans assassin didn’t play as funny, even if the “acting” and predicaments his real-life character talked his way out of are amusing.

There’s lots of cloying voice-over narration giving away the interior life of a seriously boring guy, a thoughtful college philosphy professor who treats his moonlighting gig as “field research.” Gary is a philospher, student of human behavior, cat lover and bird feeder. He’s the sort of guy who says, in voice-over, that “hit men don’t exist” in real life.

Outside of the movies. Lots and lots and lots of movies. And, well, outside of the mob.

In better movies than this, and better performances, we “see” this in the character and situations. We don’t have to be “told that” Gary Johnson sees one alter ego, cool and “professional” Ron as “not a thinker. He was a doer.”

The leads — Adria Arjona plays a miserable but beautiful wife who tries to hire her way out of a bad marriage, and “falls” for “Ron” — are merely adequate, and the supporting cast mostly sketched-in, depicted in light but not terribly funny strokes, save for the odd cartoonish New Orleans local yokel.

The “sexy” bits here can’t hold a candle to the steamed heat of such similar films as say, Clooney and J. Lo’s “Out of Sight.”

But this is Powell’s breakout year, starting with “Anyone But You” and that first “New Brad Pitt” headline. And he shows us a little star quality — not a lot, just a little.

Director and co-writer Richard Linklater has done at least one better “true crime” comedy than this — “Bernie.” The director of “Boyhood” almost always gets criticism’s benefit of the doubt, but this is, frankly, a bit of a slog.

Watchable? Sure. Well, close enough. But maybe dial down the “next Brad Pitt” thing.

Rating: R, some violence, sex, profanity

Cast: Glen Powell, Adria Arjona, Austin Amelio, Retta and Sanjay Rao.

Credits: Directed by Richard Linklater, scripted by Richard Linklater, and Glen Powell, based on a magazine article by Skip Hollandsworth. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:55