“Stick to the plan.”
That’s the mantra that the titular assassin of The Killer, played by Michael Fassbender, repeats in his head as he goes about his job, constantly rationalizing the need for a clinical attitude and lack of empathy every time he’s faced with a situation that challenges his inhumanity. The same sentence could be applied to director David Fincher’s approach to making The Killer, which at no point ever deviates from its straightforward and predictable premise. Fassbender’s nameless hitman is the best in the business, but when he fumbles a high-profile target, there are consequences that lead to him working through the ranks of the industry to exact his revenge.
In any other director’s canon, The Killer— with its patient plotting, meticulous attention to detail, and sleek design— would likely be a top-tier work. But we’re talking about David Fincher here, who has helmed some of the defining films of the 90s and 2000s: Fight Club, Se7en, Zodiac, and The Social Network. To say that The Killer is lesser Fincher doesn’t feel quite fair— it’s massively entertaining and fits in nicely with the director’s previous noir-adjacent works— but it is a tad inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. The Killer is based on a series of French graphic novels of the same name, but it’s cinematic influences are also clear. Le Samouraï, for instance, is an obvious pull with its incredibly similar set-up, but comparing The Killer with such a neo-noir masterpiece only highlights its shortcomings. The 1967 French thriller directed by Jean-Pierre Melville stars Alain Delon as a hitman who suddenly finds himself the target, and Delon navigates this conspiracy with very sparse dialogue. Fassbender’s Killer also operates with action over words, but his near-constant voiceover narration works against him. The repetition of specific tasks and phrases may illustrate the ordered nature of his existence, but it also isn’t particularly necessary, especially with an actor like Fassbender who possesses a strong enough handle on his physicality to communicate all of that without dialogue. I hate these saying these words before I’ve even typed them, and maybe I wouldn’t have even thought them had Netflix not picked up the film for distribution, but The Killer concludes with such a shrug that it really does have big direct-to-streaming energy.
That’s not to say it isn’t worth seeing in the theater if you can, because for all The Killer lacks in narrative fortitude it makes up for with oodles of style. The sound design is exceptional; the loud music the Killer is listening to in his earbuds as he works, for instance (the rock band The Smiths are prominent on the soundtrack), cuts in and out of the ambient noise of the world around him. The lengthy, voyeuristic opening sequence that finds us watching the Killer watch his target— and the other people in the surrounding environment— is quite impressive, with its doll house-like set that recalls L.B. Jeffries tracking his neighbors from his apartment window in Rear Window. The rest of the film unfortunately doesn’t possess such a firm sense of place, even as the Killer globe-trots his way up the ranks to the main client, but watching him prepare and carry out every hit with so much care is just straight-up fun, even if it isn’t leading to anything especially earth-shattering— with the exception of one-scene wonder Tilda Swinton popping up for a hot second—in the long run.
The Killer is now playing in theaters and will be available to stream on Netflix beginning November 10. Runtime: 118 minutes. Rated R.
Katie at the Movies 