Josh Hartnett's first great villain was a teenage sociopath in the Shakespeare adaptation O

Josh Hartnett was positioned as a leading man early in his career, but while he was capable of playing a traditional hero, the roles did not always leave room for nuance in character or performance. During this rise to stardom and the years following it, Hartnett has shown more complexity, playing men who hide their true selves from others. In Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides, his teen heartthrob gets a movie-star-worthy introduction set to Heart’s “Magic Man” where girls fawn over him, followed by a scene of him sporting a hangdog expression as his two dads encourage him to “be himself.” In Paul McGuigan’s Lucky Number Slevin, he plays much of the film as a naïf in a convoluted criminal plot, only for the film to reveal that his protagonist knows more than he lets on. In Guy Ritchie’s Wrath Of Man, his security guard initially seems cocksure, but the moment danger presents itself, he cowers. But in the 2001 film O, Hartnett demonstrates impressive range by playing both the movie star and the villain, alternating between the relaxed façade of a popular jock and the seething jealousy of a boy who still feels like his privileged status isn’t enough.

It’s perhaps unusual for a piece on Tim Blake Nelson’s contemporary adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello to focus on Josh Hartnett’s villainous Hugo when the high school-set film is ostensibly about Mekhi Phifer’s Odin. Then again, O is also about how Hartnett’s character feels marginalized in the narrative of his life, despite being the white, privileged son of his school’s basketball coach, Duke (Martin Sheen). Hugo is on the basketball team, narrates the film, and is charismatic enough to convince other characters of his lies, yet he still complains to others about how he isn’t seen as important. “I’m the MVP on this piece of shit team. I’ve been banging in the paint and setting screens for the past four years,” he whines to the equally entitled Roger (Elden Henson), his wealthy partner-in-crime in the plot to destroy Odin’s life. Desire for control is a motivator for many of the characters in O, whether it’s control of romantic partners, information, or society. Hugo sets out to control everyone and everything.

Despite Hugo’s ability to dominate weaker characters like Roger, Hartnett’s body language throughout O regularly betrays Hugo’s underlying insecurity, particularly in scenes with Sheen. Hartnett is often hunched over and he barely looks Sheen in the eye for more than a few seconds at a time. When Sheen throws a chalkboard eraser at him during a team meeting, Hartnett feebly raises his hands for cover. As if Hugo’s sense of insignificance wasn’t obvious enough in that moment, the coach bellows to the other players, “Everybody look at me, not him!”

Nelson and cinematographer Russell Lee Fine cleverly undermine Hugo’s status throughout. When the basketball team celebrates a victory, crowd members blur up the foreground so that they look like they’re shutting Hartnett out of the celebration, even though the shot shows him in focus. During a dreary family dinner, Sheen is filmed in focus in the background, while Hartnett morosely hangs his head, blurry in the foreground.

When Hugo does assert dominance, Hartnett and Nelson work in lockstep to convey this power. During a party sequence, the camera follows Hugo as he leads characters through the space by grabbing their shoulders and then pushing them away when they’ve finished serving their purpose. The camera following Hugo underlines his influence over certain characters, and Hartnett’s physical interactions with his co-stars are an insidious mix of friendly and aggressive.

Hugo can hide in plain sight because he can pretend to be ordinary, yet one of the creepiest elements of Hartnett’s performance is how studied his emotions seem. One can spot the moment that Hugo realizes he needs to make a particular facial expression in order to pass as sincere to other characters. During an assembly scene, Odin shouts out sophomore Mike (Andrew Keegan) as his “go-to guy” on the team (one of Hugo’s many grudges) and the camera briefly shows Hartnett with a blank expression before he robotically breaks out a winning smile to publicly congratulate Keegan. When lying to Odin that Desi (Julia Stiles) is cheating on him, Hartnett gently whispers about how “snaky” white girls are, as if conveying to Odin that this is a forbidden truth and that sharing it is an intimate form of bonding between them. Hartnett plays the phony sympathizer perfectly, masking his character’s racism with the same soft-spoken delivery he uses in romantic contexts for other performances (like in The Virgin Suicides). It’s disturbingly effective.

In some scenes, Hartnett plays Hugo’s malevolent scheming like a mischievous prankster, making the fatal consequences of his actions all the more unnerving. There’s a chilling beat where he discusses how one student will be used in his plan, and a small smile seems to spontaneously escape across his face before he regains composure. Complimenting this, Nelson’s occasional theatrical flourishes (like bookending O with opera) contextualize the heightened emotions of the performances. As the plan goes haywire, Hartnett’s voice becomes high-pitched and cracked as Hugo panics like a child. Hartnett particularly nails Hugo’s dazed body language in the final scenes, staggering backward, leaning on walls for support, his head practically vibrating in shock. It’s like the consequences of his actions are finally visible to him, and he’s not physically or mentally equipped to process it. This is not to say that Hugo is sympathetic. His racist envy towards Odin is made explicit in Hugo’s closing narration, where he compares Odin to a hawk and says everyone “hates him for what they can’t be.” There’s an eerie blankness in Hartnett’s eyes and voice when Hugo refuses to tell Odin his reasons for setting his plan in motion, illustrating how little Hugo values other people, especially those who aren’t white or male.

Over the last few years, it’s been fun to see Josh Hartnett work with auteurs like Christopher Nolan and Guy Ritchie, fitting into the vibes of their ensembles while still making memorable impressions on his own. It will be intriguing to see how Hartnett’s lead performance in M. Night Shyamalan’s upcoming thriller Trap fits alongside his portrayals of secretive and conflicted men who try to blend in, and to compare it to early performances like his work in O, where he is able to weaponize his laidback charm to hide that he’s really a snake in the grass.