One of Richard Linklater’s greatest strengths is his ability to write interesting screenplays about interesting characters. The talented writer-director is one of the few modern filmmakers who can take cliches and mold them into something real and relatable. If one looks deeper at his 1994 classic Dazed and Confused, you will find something more than a nostalgic “party movie”. What Linklater does in that film (and more than a few since) is to endear his characters to the audience. Whatever the situation or genre, his characters are crafted honestly, with many staying with us long after the credits roll. The director’s latest, Hit Man, is no different.

Glen Powell has never been as charismatic, nor has he shown as much range as he does playing Gary Johnson, a professor of Philosophy (also dabbling in Psychology) at the University of New Orleans who works part-time with the NOPD as a major player in their sting operations. Wearing a wire, Gary plays the role of hitman to aid in the arrest of people trying to hire that kind of “service”. For each assignment, Gary works up different disguises, each one tailor-made to the personalities of the suspects, impressing his police colleagues with his skill to make the perps feel at ease in confessing their crimes.

After sleazy detective, Jasper (Austin Amelio), goes on a forced vacation due to an accusation of police brutality on some teenagers, Gary steps up and gets to dive into the deep end of his creativity regarding his disguises/performances while going undercover.

Gary’s self-reflective nature needs to explore this part of himself. He is alone but not lonely. Gary has two cats, Id and Ego, students who respect him, is in love with his work, and excels at his part-time gig as a fake hitman. Linklater plays with the character and uses Gary’s need to find the “role” that works for him to examine the issue of “self” and Sigmund Freud’s three elements of personality.

Of the Id, Freud theorized that certain aspects of our personality are more primal, sometimes causing us to act upon our most basic urges. Other parts of one’s personality work to counteract these urges and guide us to conforming to the demands of reality. The Ego ensures that the impulses of the id can be expressed in an acceptable manner. The Superego holds the internalized moral standards that we learn from our parents and guides our sense of right and wrong.

In his best works, Linklater has always been a philosophical filmmaker. In pictures such as The Before Trilogy, the aforementioned Dazed and Confused, and especially Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, Linklater has something profound to say about how time shapes our identities and how our chosen identities shape our lives.

The director uses Gary to explore how we choose the identity that fits our own moral code yet we allow our ego (or superego) to combine with our id to make ourselves into one complete soul; every person’s layered uniqueness forming one complete human being.

This is not to say that Hit Man isn’t any fun. It most certainly is. Enter Madison (Adria Arjona), who’s trying to hire Gary’s alter-ego, the cool-as-a-cucumber Ron, to kill her abusive husband. As Ron, Gary can be suave, cool, and confident and his charms overcome anyone who crosses his path. Gary wonders if this is the role he wants to play for the rest of his life, or is Ron already a part of him? More layers to quite the interesting character.