This review was originally published on September 7, 2023 out of the Venice Film Festival. We are recirculating it timed to Hit Man ’s release in theaters. “How many of you really know yourselves?” Philosophy lecturer Gary Johnson (Glen Powell) posits this question to his University of New Orleans class early on in Richard Linklater’s Hit Man .

“What if your self is a construction, an illusion ...

a role you’ve been playing since the day you were born?” It turns that he’s about to become a walking answer to the question. It’s a wild story that an opening title tells us is “somewhat true”: Johnson (a real guy) worked for a while for the New Orleans Police Department as a fake hit man for its sting operations, arriving at arranged meetings wearing a wire and then getting the suspects to incriminate themselves by obtaining his services. An amiable, Honda Civic–driving, bird-watching Everyman in shorts and glasses, Gary somehow turns out to be the perfect fake assassin.

“You have this unreadable face,” a colleague tells him. “Perfectly forgettable.” He only gets the gig at a moment’s notice because the usual guy got caught beating up some teens and got himself a 120-day suspension.

But Gary’s a natural: He walks into his first meeting anxiously reminding himself that he’s a killer and somehow convincingly transforms into a badass as soon as he meets his mark. It’s not unlike the scene in Collateral where Jamie Foxx’s mousy cabbie has to p.