Current:Home > NewsMovie Review: In David Fincher’s ‘The Killer,’ an assassin hides in plain sight-LoTradeCoin
Movie Review: In David Fincher’s ‘The Killer,’ an assassin hides in plain sight
lotradecoin privacy View Date:2025-01-12 16:43:16
It’s a noir staple to open with a bit of narration, but once the nameless hit-man protagonist of David Fincher’s “The Killer” starts gabbing, he doesn’t stop.
As Fincher’s assassin (Michael Fassbender) awaits his target from a high, unfinished floor in a Paris building that looks out on the home of his mark, his inner monologue runs with a smooth, affectless monotone. His musings are a mix of professional tips (“Anticipate, don’t improvise”), nihilistic existential observations (“Most people refuse to believe that the great beyond is anything more than a cold, infinite void”) and sincere self-reflections (“I’m not exceptional, I’m just apart”).
That last line is the most telling one. “The Killer” is a terse, minimalist thriller in the cool, cold-hearted tradition of Jean Pierre Melville’s “Le Samouraï.” But while its methodical and solitary assassin acts and moves like cunning killers we’ve seen before, he blends into a modern background. He doesn’t wear a trench coat or fedora; he dresses like a German tourist, with a dopey bucket hat. He shops for tools on Amazon. He picks up supplies at Home Depot. His position in Paris is an unused WeWork space.
In “The Killer,” an agent of death is hiding in plain sight. He’s an assassin for our homogeneous, corporate world operating in the same spaces we all do. He eats McDonalds. He drives a white Avis rental van that’s the exact same as a dozen others in the rental car parking lot. Sameness is his superpower.
That also means that his nihilism is ours, too. “The Killer,” which begins streaming Friday on Netflix, is a thriller where pointlessness isn’t just lurking in the shadows. It’s everywhere, even in a movie plot that grows increasingly resistant to offering the usual genre satisfactions. Fassbender’s hitman, a background actor supreme, is a lethal manifestation of our soulless environment.
In that opening scene, he boasts of having a batting average (1.000, he brags) ‘better than Ted Williams.’ Yet the job goes badly. In the ensuing turmoil, he races to erase his footsteps but not before a dissatisfied client has his girlfriend (Sophie Charlotte) nearly beaten to death at their clandestine Dominican Republic home.
He embarks on a location-hopping mission to eliminate those responsible, an odd twist for an assassin who, at length, preaches disaffection. Much doesn’t quite fit in “The Killer.” That he even has a live-in girlfriend — we barely see her and his thoughts never again turn back to her — seems unlikely. A revenge plot also doesn’t quite suit such a dispassionate protagonist. “Forbid empathy,” he says. And the movie, too, can be withholding of anything like emotion. The most distinct thing about Fassbender’s killer is that, like Patrick Bateman bopped to Huey Lewis and the News, he listens exclusively to the Smiths.
There’s much pleasure to be found in the unnamed hit man’s proficiency, just as there is in Fincher’s cool finesse. Here, the director — long known for his own meticulous rigor — is working with some regular collaborators, among them screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker (“Se7en”), composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross ( “The Social Network” ) and cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt (“Mank” ). And there’s a kinetic thrill to seeing Fincher back in B-movie territory. (The script is based on a French graphic novel by Alexis “Matz” Nolent.)
Especially good is a nighttime sequence set in Florida that begins and ends with a bloodthirsty dog and in between features violent hand-to-hand combat that careens through glass and walls. The scene, like several others in “The Killer,” is a filmmaking feat of control. Fassbender, a natural at playing a loner (see “Shame”), is captivating throughout because he so possesses the movie’s chief traits of guile and a deadpan sense of humor.
Everything here is tantalizingly close to calculated perfection that it comes almost as a surprise how “The Killer” ends up missing its mark. You could call it a feature of the film’s existentialism, but “The Killer” increasingly is working, albeit proficiently, in a vacuum. Our hitman travels from place to place — always with fake passports with the names of TV characters like Felix Unger, Lou Grant or Sam Malone — but we don’t get anywhere deeper with him or anything else. Meaningless may be the point in “The Killer,” but at a certain point in this stylishly composed but empty vessel, you feel like pleading as another Fincher protagonist once did: What’s in the box?
“The Killer,” a Netflix release is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for strong violence, language and brief sexuality. Running time: 118 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
veryGood! (638)
Related
- Through 'The Loss Mother's Stone,' mothers share their grief from losing a child to stillbirth
- Analysis: It looks like it’ll take all 162 games to decide MLB’s postseason races
- Novelist Murakami hosts Japanese ghost story reading ahead of Nobel Prize announcements
- Do you know these 10 warning signs of diabetes? A doctor explains what to watch for.
- SCDF aids police in gaining entry to cluttered Bedok flat, discovers 73
- Have a complaint about CVS? So do pharmacists: Many just walked out
- Black musician says he was falsely accused of trafficking his own children aboard American Airlines flight
- Polish democracy champion Lech Walesa turns 80 and comments on his country’s upcoming election
- Lil Durk suspected of funding a 2022 murder as he seeks jail release in separate case
- Tesla sued by EEOC for allegedly allowing a racist and hostile work environment
Ranking
- The burial site of the people Andrew Jackson enslaved was lost. The Hermitage says it is found
- Remembering Stephen tWitch Boss and Allison Holker's Incredible Love Story
- Millions take to China’s railways, roads, air in 1st big autumn holiday since end of zero-COVID
- Why What Not to Wear's Stacy London and Clinton Kelly Just Ended Their Decade-Long Feud
- Trump will be honored as Time’s Person of the Year and ring the New York Stock Exchange bell
- Meet the woman who runs Mexico's only female-owned and operated tequila distillery
- Trump says Mar-a-Lago is worth $1.8 billion. Not long ago, his own company thought that was over $1.7 billion too high.
- Judge acquits 2 Chicago police officers of charges stemming from shooting of unarmed man
Recommendation
-
Travis Kelce Praises Taylor Swift For Making Eras Tour "Best In The World"
-
Former Cal State Fullerton worker pleads guilty in fatal campus stabbing of boss
-
Woman pleads guilty to calling in hoax bomb threat at Boston Children’s Hospital
-
NSYNC drops first new song in over 20 years: Listen to 'Better Place'
-
China's new tactic against Taiwan: drills 'that dare not speak their name'
-
Tropical Storm Philippe and Tropical Storm Rina could merge, National Hurricane Center says
-
Trump says Mar-a-Lago is worth $1.8 billion. Not long ago, his own company thought that was over $1.7 billion too high.
-
The White House chief of staff says it's on House Republicans to avert a shutdown