That Glen Powell is a gem of an actor is nothing new, but twenty years into his career, and after stealing the show in a bunch of films and series, we can all finally stop praying for him to get a leading role worthy of his talents. In “Hit Man,” Powell reunites with his “Everybody Wants Some!!” director Richard Linklater for a part that allows him to be by turns nerdy, sexy, and funny, but at all times almost unbearably charming. Add to this the fact that Powell also co-wrote this intelligent, mischievous mashup of many different genres and tones with Linklater, and it is impossible not to instantly develop a huge crush on the guy. The only blemish on this picture is the film inexplicably premiering out of competition at the Venice Film Festival rather than competing for the Golden Lion. 
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Gary Johnson (Glen Powell) is a psychology professor at a university in New Orleans who is fascinated by “the eternal mystery of human consciousness and behavior.” A recently divorced but happy man, he tells his students that “the self is a construction, a part you’ve been playing your entire lives,” yet admits to being very stuck in his ways. He seems to know and to be very comfortable with who he is: a floppy-haired nerd who lives alone with his cats (named Id and Superego) and spends much of his free time birding. The rest of it, he can be found supplementing his income by helping the local police on a very specific type of sting operations. Whenever the authorities learn of someone who seeks to hire a professional killer, a cop pretending to be an angel of death goes to meet this “client.” Gary’s job is to install the electronics that will allow the police to record the unsuspecting person as they plainly say they want somebody eliminated. 
It seems hard to believe, but this story is very much based in reality. Gary Johnson was a real person, who passed away in 2022, and the film is based on an October 2001 Texas Monthly article by journalist Skip Hollandsworth. The real Gary was an investigator in Houston, not a freelance tech guy in New Orleans, but he was passionate about psychology, eventually teaching it at university. And as in the film, he found his calling the day he was asked to step in as the undercover cop in the role of the hired killer. 
We arrive at this fateful moment in Gary’s life very quickly, following a breathless opening sequence whose quick pace and smooth rhythm already suggest in him, as nerdy as he may appear, an appealing sense of cool. His voiceover shows a quick wit and a real way with words, even if his chat can easily turn into a self-absorbed deluge of birding facts. Not so once the genial man steps into the part he was born to play: that of a sinister killer for hire. Although he’s had very little preparation, we watch him transform into a supremely confident, terrifying tough guy as soon as he steps into the diner, where he is to meet his first embittered would-be-murderer-by-proxy. 
Linklater, who has always been concerned with the fine line between the jock and the nerd (see “Dazed and Confused” or indeed “EWS!!”) and the reasons why people end up in one category or the other, wonders about all of this out loud in “Hit Man.” Gary proves a preternaturally good shapeshifter, but for him, this isn’t just an opportunity to show off his previously unsuspected acting chops. It is, most of all, a chance to see human psychology at work in the field from up close. 
Gary is fascinated by people who truly believe it is possible to hire someone to commit murder for you. “Hitmen don’t really exist,” he says early on (who knew?), and his job isn’t to be realistic but to “be the fantasy” of the hitman that each suspect imagines. His academic mind delights in studying the files of the people he will cheat; better to come up with the persona that will appeal to them the most. A quick-tempered and tattooed hoodlum, a sophisticated Patrick Bateman-type in a suit, or a Russian-sounding, leather-clad Van Helsing lookalike — with the right makeup, props, and costumes, he can be them all. Each reveal of the characters he chooses to play is funnier than the last; the wannabe murderer always fooled and arrested in the end. 
Gary is often required to testify in these people’s trials, and though he is routinely criticized for supposedly trapping people before they’d even hurt anyone, he claims to be at peace with it all. Most of these prevented murders could be described as premeditated since the accused usually had to go to some length to secure the necessary cash. In any case, Gary has a more intellectual defense: he doesn’t entrap anyone but simply helps them to express what they really want. 
It’s a logic that falls apart when he encounters the first suspect he really does not want to send to prison. To meet Madison (Adria Arjona), a young woman wanting to get rid of her abusive husband, Gary decides to become Ron, a suave man with slicked-back hair, aviators, a two-day stubble, and the fashion sense of an Abercrombie & Fitch model. In short, Ron is very sexy, and Madison immediately starts flirting with him. It is a classic screwball moment of mutual attraction getting the best of whatever other consideration should prevail at the moment. One of the film’s many brilliant lines comes when Madison asks Ron, as if they were on a date, “So, what do you do?” 
The usually conscientious Gary becomes terribly unprofessional when, against protocol, he advises Madison not to hire him and to instead use the cash to leave her husband and start a new life. Did Gary just help a desperate woman come to her senses, or did he let a future murderer off the hook? One thing is certain: you could have cut the sexual tension between Ron and Madison with a butter knife. 
As the fake debate about sex in films continues to rage on, it is such a gift to see a character put something as important as justice (and, potentially, another man’s life) in jeopardy in the pursuit of desire. The mix of romance and crime is a potent one, practically guaranteed to make sparks fly in both departments and they sure do. When Gary gets a message from Madison a few weeks later, he cannot help but pay her a visit. From there, it isn’t long before they burst through her front door, voraciously kissing and practically ripping the clothes off their backs. 
“Hit Man” owes a lot to film noir, especially in terms of its twisted plotting, backstabbing characters, and its pairing of sex with crime. But it does not have the sanctimonious tone of noir, telling us that Gary will for sure be punished for his lust in the end. This film about fantasy is itself a fantasy, allowing us to watch people act in a totally irresponsible way — one of the great original pleasures of cinema — without worrying too much about what is absolutely right or wrong. When Gary becomes Ron or any other fake hitman, he is playing with moral relativism: for the sake of gaining someone’s trust, he puts himself in their shoes and sees the prospect of murder from their perspective. Gary explains it best when he discusses Nietsche with his students — another fun meta moment in a film full of them. 
Seeing people pretend to be other people is, of course, what every fiction film promises. But here, Ron’s character is an acknowledgment within the film of the lie involved in acting, or at least of the complex relationship between reality and fantasy. Suddenly, we are let in on the joke of acting and can appreciate the joy in performing as if we were seeing it for the first time. Seeing Gary escape his own self by playing a part is, alongside the nearly debilitating hotness of both actors, one of the film’s endless sources of joy — Ron, a fantasy designed for Madison, soon comes to serve him, too. 
But how long can Gary pretend to be Ron? And what happens to Gary’s original personality if he spends most of his time acting like Ron? The fiendishly plotted crime comedy is full of surprises, Gary enmeshing himself into an ever greater web of lies as he tries to reconcile the needs of his id (pursuing pleasure; his relationship with Madison) and his superego (doing the right thing). This culminates in a meta scene of improvised acting — reminiscent of a particularly brilliant moment in Louis Garrel’s own romantic comedy-drama “The Innocent” from last year — that had the audience at the film’s first press screening spontaneously burst into applause. By far the best of the many films about hired killers at this year’s Venice Film Festival, “Hit Man” finds both comedy and refuge in the elusive nature of identity and acts as a balm in our confusingly performative, deeply unsexy times. [A+] 
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