Hit Man (2023)

Richard Linklater | 1hr 55min

The concept of self is “a construct, an act, an illusion,” college professor Gary Johnson informs his students in the opening act of Hit Man. One could almost imagine this passage being spoken by any number of other Richard Linklater characters being carried away by their own intellectualism, though unlike those haughty young adults, Gary does not believe he has anything to prove. Instead, this lecture serves as meta-commentary, woven through a montage introducing the characters he adopts in his second job. As an undercover police contractor, Gary uses his extraordinary skills of deception to convince would-be criminals that he is an assassin for hire, before unleashing the full force of the law.

The attention to detail that Gary applies to these sting operations go beyond merely fulfilling his duty. He relishes the challenge of truly fooling others, tailoring fresh hitman personas to each client who comes his way. Patrick Bateman-style psychopaths in business suits, creepy Russian mobsters with crooked smiles, gun-toting rednecks lusting for violence – Linklater swiftly moves through every archetype in the book, studying the rapport that Gary builds with his clientele before cutting to their guilty mugshots. Each job is his chance to become someone else, constantly shedding his dweeby professor image until even he begins to question whether that is merely another act in his extensive repertoire.

It is a tough sell for Glen Powell to play so drastically against type, though like Gary, he is clearly having fun adopting the idiosyncrasies of each hitman character. Perhaps his ill fit in this role is also partially the point, as when he takes on the persona of suave hitman Ron to charm his newest client Madison, Powell immediately falls back into the charismatic leading man archetype that he has built his career upon thus far. His spur of the moment decision to sway Madison away from killing her abusive husband is the first small rebellion to foreshadow the rise of the aloof, rule-breaking Ron, who certainly at least feels a lot more in tune with Powell’s natural talents than Gary’s self-conscious mannerisms. The chemistry that Ron has with Madison is instant, and so it isn’t hard to see why Gary betrays his better instincts to pursue a dangerous romance with this woman who believes he is totally different person.

Hit Man is not so much a drift away from Linklater’s indie character dramas than it is a commercial diversion, joining his list of more straightforward comedies including School of Rock and Bernie. He revels in the black humour here, exposing Gary’s disturbingly intimate knowledge of how to dispose a body, as well as his playfully insensitive attitude towards matters of life and death. That much at least he has in common with Ron, leading to risky, even violent behaviour when his new relationship is complicated by Madison’s jealous husband Ray, as well as rival police contractor Jasper.

The name of Gary’s cats Id and Ego are no doubt a glaring clue to the psychological drama that lies beneath Linklater’s comedy, eventually rendered explicit in our protagonist’s class on Freudian psychoanalytic theory and its parallel editing with an impassioned sex scene. These lectures essentially become formal markers of Gary’s development, touching on some of history’s greatest thinkers until he inevitably arrives at the nihilistic philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. “The truth is created through the integration of different points of view, and there are no absolutes, either moral or epistemological,” he ponders aloud to his students.

“If the universe is not fixed, then neither are you, and you really can become a different and hopefully, better person.”

The question of where Gary ends and where Ron begins is essentially meaningless in Hit Man. There is freedom to be found in recognising the artifice of each persona one presents to the world, abandoning hope of true self-discovery, and thus adopting whatever identity allows a life of passion and abandon. Linklater is not blind to the darkness that lies in this existentialist outlook, sinking Gary/Ron ever further into an amoral void where good and evil are equally unrewarded and unpunished, yet Hit Man’s resolution would not be nearly as bleak if the dubious journey there weren’t also so recklessly enticing.

Hit Man is currently streaming on Netflix.