The Killer: Slaying in True David Fincher Fashion
By Liz Braun
Rating: A-
Expectations run high for a David Fincher film and luckily, The Killer measures up.
When a hired gun makes an error, he finds himself on the run from other professional assassins who would annihilate him to correct that mistake.
Having a target on his own back launches our anti-hero on a complex revenge scheme. Not entirely a new idea, to be sure, but one that is meticulously executed here.
Further to meticulous execution, Michael Fassbender stars as the well-organized killer, a man with a very particular set of skills. We get to know the unnamed assassin through his inner monologue. His stream-of-consciousness musings concern attention to detail, the need for anonymity, the art of vigilance, the work of other killers, the importance of preparation and his thoughts on justice and the law.
His philosophical notions fill the long stretches while he patiently waits around for the person he has been hired to kill. The story opens in Paris, where the killer occupies a garret and prepares over a few days to fulfill a contract. He does his yoga stretches, contemplates what he eats on the job, assembles and disassembles a complicated rifle. “If you’re unable to endure boredom this work is not for you,” he states.
He says, “Empathy is weakness.” And “This is what you must commit yourself to if you want to succeed.”
It’s all a bit like a Dale Carnegie course for killers, even as the tension builds toward the planned assassination.
About 20 minutes in, the target appears, and the well-oiled killing machine goes into action. The build-up here is so superb that you may find yourself physically shrinking back into your seat with dread — and, if we’re being honest, anticipation — over the impending kill.
But things do not go as planned, and the killer has to flee. Oh, bother. Further tension ensues.
Viewers will find themselves rooting for a cold-blood killer as he eludes those pursuing him.
When the killer arrives at his secret lair in the Dominican Republic, he discovers his hideaway smashed up and blood-stained. Those pursuing him have done harm to someone else; what follows is 90 minutes of cruel, calculated, complicated and often creative revenge.
People are dispatched with construction tools, household implements, intense and violent fisticuffs and sometimes with just a simple bullet to the brain.
All in a day’s work.
The action, divided into chapters, bounces from Paris to Florida to Chicago to New York; so many to kill, so little time. Along the way, you’ll encounter Tilda Swinton, Charles Parnell, and Arliss Howard. The story is written by Andrew Kevin Walker and adapted from Le Tueur, a graphic novel from Luc Jacamon and Alexis Nolent.
The Killer soundtrack is heavy with The Smiths (go figure) and the movie is often bizarrely funny — our elite killer travels with a dozen different identities, for example, and his various aliases are all from boomer-era TV.
This is an exhilarating action picture. The Killer involves brutal violence leavened with incisive social commentary, all of it put across with great Fincher style. And bloodletting.
The Killer. Directed by David Fincher. Written by Andrew Kevin Walker, Luc Jacamon and Alexis Nolent. Starring Michael Fassbender and Tilda Swinton. In theatres October 27 and on Netflix November 10.