Hit Man: An Existentialist Approach to Living

Hit Man is Richard Linklater’s latest movie about the double life of a college professor who wants to live the philosophy he teaches. The story follows Gary (Glen Powell), who moonlights with an undercover law enforcement team that extracts confessions from homicide solicitors. He doesn’t pose as a hitman, though. He’s one of the techs in the van that does whatever a tech-in-a-van does.

Gary’s life as a professor provides commentary and context for his life helping catch criminals. Gary will introduce a concept to his students in his first life and then make a choice in which he must live out that concept, in his second life as part of an undercover team.

Gary is involved with this team, despite his life as a mild-mannered professor, because something deep inside of him wants to take control of his life. We realize this conflict as he lectures his students on Nietzsche’s view that life is something to be seized. Nietzsche famously proclaimed “God is dead,” a phrase that was not triumphant; it was desperately lamenting. If God was the single entity who could tell humans what our purpose was and what our lives meant, then his death was a tragedy. Absent meaning, how can our actions and decisions matter? This was his creative way of capturing the absurdist’s stance. 

Philosophical absurdism is two-pronged: descriptive, first, then prescriptive. The descriptive starting point of absurdism declares that meaning is not inherent to life or the universe, that there is no purpose baked into this conscious experience by default. Likewise, Gary himself grapples with this absurdism, acknowledging the unideal truths of homicide that he encounters in his line of work: those situations where love mixes with hate and makes murder seem like the easiest way out. Gary speaks with his ex-wife, who’s still his friend, and acknowledges the self as protean with no stable anchor. We get the sense that Gary’s involved with the ugly work of getting evidence against people with homicidal intentions because he’s searching for meaning in his philosophically absurd life. Where does he go from here?

There are many responses to descriptive absurdism. The prescriptive absurdist responds that if life has no meaning, then we should revel in its meaninglessness. Do the thing that you stop yourself from doing. It doesn’t matter! Gary doesn’t exactly take this route, as he does search for meaning by involving himself with the law enforcement team. Meanwhile a nihilist would respond by plunging into a well of despair. A life without meaning sucks and we shouldn’t hide from that. Gary doesn’t do this either, instead caring how he treats others and engaging with his life, as we’ll see. 

The existentialist responds to the descriptive absurdist by assigning their own meaning to life in order to live virtuously, still. Nietzsche is an existentialist. However he is an existentialist that knows the temptation of nihilism, something most humans will inevitably fall victim to in the face of life’s oppressive absurdity. So he sees two kinds of people in the world. There are those who intuitively perceive its absurdity, and respond by becoming automatons, going through their daily motions because they have to survive. They are void of inspiration and live life one escapist weekend to the next. And then there are those who look directly into the abyss, understand its implications, and defy it. They look to the world and boldly assert that all of this still matters. They choose to create beauty, inspire others, and spread virtue. These are things a regular person cannot do. Therefore such individuals are more than human. Nietzsche coins a term for these philosophical “super” humans—ubermenschen.

This philosophy is put to the test when Jasper (Austin Amelio), who poses as the team’s faux hitman, is suddenly forced to take leave, placing Gary in the position to step into the vacant role. How does Gary respond to this dilemma? He makes an affirmative choice during his first time undercover: he flips a switch and becomes the man his target thinks he is. He gets the confession and goes back to his team with something inside of him, newly awoken. He begins living the philosophy he teaches. He becomes a Nietzschean ubermensch—Some of you might be familiar with this word from another tragic, immoral context. The Nazi regime adopted it to refer to their specific misrepresentation of people of Aryan ancestry. Nietzsche responded to the violent and bigoted misappropriation of his term in a letter to his sister, stating clearly that the regime was not using his ideas as he had intended, which didn’t stop them from continuing to do so. We will use the word here as Nietzsche intended: to refer to people who take their lives into their own control for the betterment of those other humans who have been overcome by the nihilism of absurdity.

Complications then arise when this new, uber Gary encounters Madison (Adria Arjona), who is seeking a hit man. Gary is playing the character of Ron when he makes the bold, Nietzschean decision to spare Madison from incrimination, before following it up with another bold decision to begin seeing her romantically. Of course this means he has to maintain the persona of Ron with her, which puts this persona into conflict with his own. 

The film helps us frame Gary’s inner conflict by introducing Freud’s ideas on how the self relates to the compartments of the psyche. Where the superego is the part of the brain that aspires to goodness by considering what we should do, the id is the part of the brain that connects base subconscious desires to reflexive conscious desires as we perceive them. Ron is smooth, capable of killing, and self-assured; he is a reflection of Gary’s id. Meanwhile Gary is a nice guy that lives a pretty boring life fulfilling all of its shoulds; he is ruled by his superego. 

Jasper, then, is a vehicle for Gary’s ultimate outer conflict, which emerges as a result of his existentialist decision, as he tries to sabotage Gary’s life and career. He wants his role back and exposes Ron as Gary, which catalyzes a convergence of Gary’s inner and outer conflict; Gary will have to solve one by solving the other. How would a Nietzschean ubermensch resolve this inner conflict? 

By committing to what he wants. Uber Gary shows up and navigates each hurdle perfectly. Jasper implicates him with Madison and he implicates Jasper with both of them. Jasper tries to implicate Madison in another character’s murder and Gary tells her what to say to beat the allegations. And as he navigates these hurdles he comes to behave with a bit more of Ron in his attitude, carried mostly in Powell’s performance. For instance when Gary tells Jasper he’s taking his place in the beginning, he shrugs and nervously grimaces, while uber Gary responds to Jasper throwing hurdles at him with steely resolve illustrated in the eyes. His personality is gradually balancing.

Jasper finally becomes desperate and tries to blackmail Gary and Madison. This final external dilemma solves itself quite naturally when Madison poisons Jasper, prompting uber Gary to actualize by putting a plastic bag over his head to finish the job. Gary solves his external conflict with Jasper by resolving his inner conflict between his id and his superego. This is presented as a morally good thing, as we see Gary earlier lecturing to his students on the role of targeted executions of dangerous members of society as being a reasonable part of almost all societies.

Over the course of this story we see Gary choose to give his existence new meaning by taking control of his life, which creates both internal and external conflicts. He synthesizes Nietzsche’s philosophy with Freud’s to do more than just solve his immediate conflicts. He comes to find more richness in life by living the philosophy he’s been teaching. Indeed, it’s the last day of class when he tells his students with an earned conviction to seize the identity they want for themselves.

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