A film review by Craig J. Koban November 29, 2023

THE KILLER

2023, R, 118 mins.

Michael Fassbender as The Killer  /  Arliss Howard as The Client - Claybourne  /  Charles Parnell as The Lawyer - Hodges  /  Gabriel Polanco as Leo   /  Kerry O'Malley as Dolores  /  Emiliano Pernia as Marcus  /  Sala Baker as The Brute  /  Sophie Charlotte as Magdala  /  Tilda Swinton as The Expert  /  Monique Ganderton as The Dominatrix  /  Kellan Rhude as Business Man

ORIGINAL FILM

THE KILLER's release - in a limited theatrical run and a much larger streaming one via Netflix - should be a cause for celebration, seeing as it re-teams the director and writer of SEVEN in David Fincher and Andrew Kevin Walker respectively.  

They base their latest collaboration on the French graphic novel series of the same name by Alexis Nolent and Luc Jacamon, which in turn delved into the titular assassin that gets into series trouble after one of his planned hits goes bad.  

Fincher + Walker + graphic novel adaptation = yeah, sign me up!

To be fair, Fincher himself could hardly be labeled as a prolific filmmaker as of late, with THE KILLER being his first film since 2020's MANK (also a Netflix backed project) and he has only made two films in the last decade in 2014's GONE GIRL and 2011's THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO remake.  THE KILLER, to its credit, is another robustly stylized picture that only he could muster, not to mention that star Michael Fassbender is completely in his element in the lead role.  Disappointingly, though, Fincher's latest is light on story, suffers from some pacing issues, and features an over-reliance on one distracting narrative device (more on that soon).  It's a mostly solid, but wildly uneven, thriller. 

The opening scene for THE KILLER is emblematic of what works well for this film and what sticks out like a sore thumb and simply doesn't.  We meet the unnamed "killer" in question (Fassbender), who's embarking on a multi-day stakeout in Paris.  His intended target is in a hotel room directly across the street.  The Killer (as he's credited) is a deeply fastidious man, to say the least.  Everything about the hit to come is meticulously planned out in obsessive-compulsive detail.  He preps his sniper rifle, adjusts his scope, ensures that everything is in fine working order, and waits...and waits...and waits for just the right moment to get the perfectly orchestrated shot.  As we hear in a very long and often pretentious voiceover narration track, this man has a code of conduct and set of must-follow rules while on the job that he must never waiver from...like...ever.  Much of it involves living off the grid, maintaining a constant veil of anonymity everywhere he goes (he dresses like a German tourist because he feels that the French avoid German tourists), maintaining proper protein intake (he likes McDonalds), and buffering out all of the distractions of the outside world with music (he likes The Smiths).  Most crucially, though, is that he must always maintain an emotional detachment while on the job ("Of those who like to put their faith in the inherent goodness of mankind, I have to ask, "Based on what, exactly?" he bemoans at one point).

Then, after waiting for what seems like an eternity, his target makes his appearance across the street in the hotel in question (he also has a woman with him dressed like a dominatrix).  The Killer zones in for what should be an easy kill...but he miraculously misses and strikes the woman instead.

Whoops.

After muttering an obscenity to himself for his gaffe, The Killer quickly gathers his things and flees, realizing that he will have to evade the local police and any hired security his high-value prey had with him. Thankfully, he has backup plans upon backup plans, like having multiple aliases (amusingly based on TV characters) and passports, which allows for him to avoid apprehension and/or arrest and fly back and forth from country to country.  When The Killer arrives back at his Dominican Republic home, he's horrified to see what amounts to a blood-soaked crime scene.  His girlfriend, Magdela (Sophie Charlotte), has been brutally beaten nearly to death and is at a nearby hospital in the ICU, clinging to her life.  Driven by an unwavering desire to avenge her on top of eliminating everyone that's now perusing him based on his failed assassination attempt in Paris, The Killer goes on the steely-eyed offensive and starts to gather clues that point towards perpetrators that he will - come hell or high water - exterminate with extremely lethal prejudice.  

Even when THE KILLER more than shows its deficiencies (which I'll get to soon), the film has two rock-solid anchors in both Fassbender in front of and Fincher behind the camera.  I should also point out Walker's screenplay, which works in concert with Fassbender to paint a portrait of this ruthlessly determined mass murdering machine that is rarely, if ever, humanized throughout the film.  The Killer trusts no one, only his methods and expertise on the job (granted, he screws up royally at the beginning of the film).  He is not a nice man.  For lack of a better descriptor, he's a horrible person who commits horrible acts.  When he fails on the job and experiences personal tragedy, the film doesn't go out of its way to make viewers empathize with him.  He doesn't learn the error of his ways or starts to have a crisis of conscience.  There's no redemption for him.  He's cold-blooded and a merciless being, lusting for vengeance.  That's it.  This all makes THE KILLER a decidedly dark and uncompromisingly macabre film.  Even when you think he might show pity to one of his defenseless victims, he doesn't, and he kills them with alarming immediacy in some key scenes.  I have to give this film credit for not trying to soften this sociopath at all.   

Fassbender, as mentioned, is an incredibly important piece of this puzzle as well.  Without his superlative performance and sinister physical presence in THE KILLER, I doubt that I would have invested in it any more than any other hitman thriller on pure autopilot.  There's a chilling edge and haunting stillness that the Oscar-nominated actor brings to this role, which underscore the depths of his depravity.  The Killer is always like a proverbial caged animal that could break out and attack when least expected, and Fassbender knows intuitively how to evoke this man's primal ferocity.  Fincher, one of cinema's greatest visualists, also knows how to shoot his star and all of his surroundings with the type of exquisite exactitude that we've come to expect from the filmmaker for decades now.  With shadowy cinematography by Erick Messerschmidt and a rhythmic techno score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross adding an abundance of rich texture to the picture, Fincher makes his neo-noir thriller radiate with aesthetic confidence through and through.  I think this is most evident in THE KILLER's opening 15 or so minutes, which highlight the character's planning (and then bungling) of his assignment.  It's clear that Fincher was influenced by REAR WINDOW here in abundance, and it's hard not to draw parallels to both films in this instance.  The main difference here is that this film doesn't have a likeable and vulnerable wheelchair-bound Jimmy Stewart spying on his neighbors. 

All of this is so bloody great, and the mood that Fincher establishes early on is potent as it thrusts audience members into this man's lurid world and code of ethics with a stark immediacy.  This opening is nearly all dialogue-free, which would have been amazing if it were not for Fincher and Walker's borderline exasperating insistence on having the character go on and on via a voiceover track to explain seemingly everything about himself and his plan of attack.  I don't have problems, per se, with internal monologue tracks being used in films to take us into the mindsets of their characters.  Unfortunately, Fassbender's assassin ruminates so frequently on so many things throughout THE KILLER that it becomes more grating by the minute.  The Killer here is a man of focus and few words, so having him talk and talk...and talk...to give us insight into his psychology and methods seems counterproductive, at best.  THE KILLER is a rare example of a film that's quite guilty of telling instead of showing, and for a director as gifted as Fincher when it comes to immersing us in his scrupulously designed worlds, letting the monologue do all of the explaining is a damning misstep here.  Some of the things that The Killer pontificates on are engaging, but oftentimes his words are awash in hitman/killer clichés when it comes to perceived justice, nobility, and life and death.  And some of his passages are too flowery and verbose: "Forbid empathy.  Empathy is weakness" or "Fate is a placebo.  The only life path is the one behind you," or "From the beginning of time, the few have exploited the many."  This is all pretty cookie-cutter and abruptly on the nose.   

THE KILLER is also an inexcusably long film, considering how simplistic its main story is and how very little actually happens in it.  I think there's a lean and mean (and shorter) film that Fincher could have made here in terms of exploring the assassin's twisted mania, but this is not it.  The film also doesn't have much of an ending when all is said and done (I'm all for ambiguity, but it's almost as if Fincher and Walker creatively got caught in a corner and had no firm idea how to conclude their narrative; it just...abruptly ends).  That's not to say that going on The Killer's journey is not without its pulpy pleasures (the film is at its best when we witness him orchestrate one elaborately engineered get-back scheme after another, and one brawl that he has with a muscle-bound thug is sensationally choreographed).  Having said that, does THE KILLER offer something truly revitalizing and new for this genre?  Not really.  This is a gloriously atmospheric and beautifully produced film, and Fincher's aesthetic fingers are all over it.  His partner in crime (no pun intended) in Fassbender is unendingly mesmerizing from beginning to end here.  But (big but), for as empowered as it is as a visceral experience, the film is kind of dramatically flat and too in love with itself when it comes to its choices (jettison most of the voiceover track, and you'll see what I mean).  THE KILLER didn't come together completely as a whole for me as a genre exercise; it's arguably second-tier Fincher at best.