Seize the identity you want for yourself

A few thoughts after watching Hit Man

Adria Arjona and Glen Powell in Hit Man

I realized not everyone fantasized about the same hit man. Every sting operation was a performance. And each arrest was like a standing ovation. I had it down to a science, until things got, well, complicated. My name is a Gary Johnson, and my simple question for you is, who is your hit man?

The moment I heard about Hit Man, I knew I’d love it. For me, the movie pre-checks key boxes.

• Crime comedy✅

• Loosely based on a true story first reported by Skip Hollandsworth in Texas Monthly✅

• Directed by Richard Linklater✅

• Starring Glen Powell✅

A word about Glen Powell

There are two kinds of film fans: people who believe Glen Powell is the greatest movie star of his generation, and people who will come to believe that statement soon enough.

I am in the first camp. I love Glen Powell. He was the best part of Top Gun 2—a movie that has a lot going for it. He is the reason I saw Twisters, a genre I usually pass on, because in the trailer, when Powell said, “if you feel it, chase it,” I felt it, and I chased him… all the way to the theater. He was the weirdest part of Everybody Wants Some!!, a delightfully weird Linklater movie that’s sort of a spiritual cousin to Dazed and Confused, another delightfully weird Linklater movie about bored adolescents who ostensibly party away their idle hours, but in actuality, use those idle hours to try on new identities.

Which me brings back to…

Hit Man

Powell plays a psychology professor who moonlights for the New Orleans Police Department. After a corrupt cop is suspended, Powell becomes the department’s go-to undercover officer whenever they need a fake hit man. Turns out, he’s the greatest fake hit man of all time, not because he has ice water running through his veins, but because he understands that posing as a contract killer is about meeting the client’s expectations. Slick hit man in a suit? Ruthless Russian killer? Redneck enforcer? Everyman charmer? Powell’s character plays these roles perfectly, and those scenes are what makes Hit Man so much fun to watch. But it’s the exploration of the man behind all those fake contract killers that makes Hit Man so interesting.

Gary Johnson was a real person. He worked for the Houston police department and on the side he taught classes at a local community college. If you met the real Gary Johnson at a party, you’d immediately recognize him as the most interesting man in the room. You can read about that Gary Johnson in this Texas Monthly piece by Skip Hollandsworth.

The fictional Gary Johnson is a different story. Powell and Linklater invented that Gary Johnson for the film. The fictional Gary Johnson is a boring nerd. He’s a cat-dad who keeps to himself. If you met that Gary Johnson at a party, you’d forget him even before you finished talking to him. When we meet his ex-wife, we learn that she cares for Gary, but worries that he isn’t living his truth, or as another Linklater character might put it, Gary Johnson isn’t l-i-v-i-n’.

The story in Hit Man is about the fictional Gary Johnson seizing the identity he wants for himself. To get there, he moonlights as something he’s not (professor posing as cop), goes undercover (cop posing as criminal), and then pretends to be a very peculiar version of the bad boy trope (charming contract killer who romances his client). In the end, Powell’s fictional Gary Johnson isn’t any of these identities, but by trying on so many different identities—a big theme in Linklater movies—he ultimately seizes the identity he wants for himself. That is, he finds a way to finally begin l-i-v-i-n’.

Maybe we’re all a little Gary Johnson

Identity is a nice-to-have theme for a crime story, not a must-have. But watching Hit Man, I thought a lot about what draws me to crime stories. There’s no singular explanation there. I like solving puzzles. I find explorations of morality interesting. Crime stories provide a cathartic release that let me confront and process my own fears, anxieties, and darkest impulses. Crime stories are also just plain cool. But in a way, every crime story I consume is also about seizing—if only for a few hours—an aspect of my own identity.

I’m not a bank robber. But when I watch Point Break, there’s a part of me that roots for the Ex-Presidents. It’s the same part of me that fantasizes about casting off the shackles of society and living as an outlaw in the truest sense of that word. It’s not about doing crimes, it’s about living free. The crimes—or in this case, the crime story—are a means to an end for me. If I can lose myself in those stories, I can find Outlaw Michael. I can be free, if only for a moment, and only in my own mind.

I’m not a cop either. But when I read a Harry Bosch novel, or watch the show, I root for the detective. I believe what Bosch believes—everybody counts, or nobody counts. The difference, of course, is that Bosch is prepared to go all the way to hell and back for that proposition, whereas I’m only prepared to go to Barnes & Nobles. I’m kidding, of course. I’m prepared to go further for justice, but not much further, and certainly not as far as Bosch. Losing myself in Bosch’s story is how I find Justice Michael. But the real life Michael, who is deeply concerned with issues of justice, confronts injustice with timid half-measures and pragmatic triangulation. The real Michael asks what is possible, rather than demanding what is ideal. He wants to believe in bold propositions like, let justice be done, or the heavens fall. But when he hears such talk, he is reminded of something one of his law school professors said: “Let justice be done, or the heavens fall sounds nice, unless the heavens fall on your ass. Then you’re good and truly fucked.”

Crime stories are as close as I’ll come to seizing either identity. I get my kicks vicariously, as both a cop and a criminal. But there’s a larger lesson from Hit Man, and maybe all Linklater films more broadly.

The lesson is that we owe it to ourselves to be ourselves. That’s not as easy as it sounds. To live our truth, we have to commit to the bit, as Glen Powell did. But what’s even scarier is that committing to the bit means we’re committing to the possibility that we might fail, and that if we do fail, we’re going to have to keep going. That’s life, isn’t it? You try to be true to yourself, but you never quite get there, and so you keep trying. Or, maybe you don’t try at all. Maybe you simply withdraw into quiet desperation. That sounds like the safe move, but it’s also the most painful move. A series of failed attempts to seize the identity we want is an absurd way to live your life, but it’s far better than the alternative.

I write about the crime genre AND I write crime comedies. My novel is a slacker about a wise-cracking reporter who risks life, limb, and dignity to solve a murder in Porn Valley. Or, in Linklater-speak, Heywood Jablowme (not his real name) is determined to seize the identity he wants before the identity he has can define him.

Pick up a copy of Not Safe for Work on Amazon, or all the other book places.

I want to know what you think!

1. Have you seen Hit Man yet? Thoughts?

2. Is Glen Powell the greatest movie star of his generation, or are you waiting for more proof?

3. Are you a Linklater fan, or do you hate the “hang out” genre?

4. What identity do you want to seize?