The Killer review: David Fincher’s assassin thriller hits a dead end

This review of David Fincher’s The Killer comes from the film’s premiere at the 2023 Venice International Film Festival. Netflix will release the movie in November.

David Fincher’s latest movie — a Netflix adaptation of the French graphic novel series The Killer — is nihilistic in the most recursive, reductive sense. Its search for meaning hits dead end after dead end. While that’s part of its artistic credo, it’s incredibly frustrating to watch it meander around numerous bends, finding only the tiniest handful of exciting or bleakly funny scenes. What’s especially strange about The KillerFincher accomplishes nearly everything he set out to do, but his bar is dispiritingly high.

There is only one thing truly electric about The KillerIt is the opening credits that are live-wire. It’s a throwback from the impressionistic, grimy montages with textures and detail that Fincher made popular in his film The Social Network. Seven, which eventually became shorthand for “this is a procedural.” From there, the movie quickly transitions into a methodical, observational first act, following an anonymous assassin (Michael Fassbender) on a job in Paris.

The man perches himself in an empty WeWork, right across the street, from a luxurious penthouse. He finds ways to kill time while his victim is not in view, and he recounts the details of his assassination method with a ritualistic voiceover. Aggro Dr1ftThe hallucinogens are still there, but without them. In a seated position, he explains to the audience that he has severed himself from his empathy.

His assertions are not without flaws. He’s constantly distracted while surveilling his subject’s home — his gaze falls on other windows and people on the street — and his idea of nutritious protein is a breakfast McGriddle. Wearing shirts in tropical prints, and cheap, loose jackets, he tries to blend into the crowd, but is incredibly conspicuous. (It’d be hard for witnesses to forget his floppy bucket hat.) His version of the Bond spy gadget, a coffee cup that collapses into a small pouch is also quite impressive.

Initially, The Killer seems like a pitch-perfect satire of assassin dramas, especially when it reveals that Fassbender’s character kind of sucks at his job. At least, this particular mission goes awry in a manner that deflates every aspect of the MO he’s walked the audience through. That’s a fantastic place to start, but all the tension and sense of wry observation quickly evaporate. In a cat-and–mouse global chase in which the hunter is the prey, Fincher’s thriller drips intense paranoia. It’s a GameBut none of it pays off.

Fincher and screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker disguise (and only hint at) what the Killer’s career has looked like up to this point, and they keep us at a distance from his perspective. That comes to mind whenever Fincher cuts back and forth between “objective” shots of the character and minor snippets of his point of view, usually through a sniper scope while he’s listening to The Smiths. In the brief moments when we see the world through his eyes, we also hear it through his ears, as he’s engulfed in music — which quickly disappears once the edit cuts back to its neutral vantage. While this sudden change in volume draws attention to the movie’s artifice, forcing us to recalibrate our own viewpoint, it’s a flourish that’s distracting at best.

And that isn’t the only downside to keeping us at arm’s length from the Killer. Some scenes feel disconnected because of the voiceover. The Killer’s objective when he lands in a new city is completely obscured, so we feel less like accomplices to his journey (or even persecutors chasing him), and more like hostages peeking out at him through rips in a blindfold. At various points, it’s hard to tell whether he’s intruding on someone’s home to murder them, or simply holing up at a safe house. This should, in theory, play to the paranoia that was mentioned earlier (but which has long since faded away by the second part). But Fincher’s calculated aesthetic approach, and his carefully considered framing and movement, end up distinctly noncommittal.

This is one of the few movies where Fincher uses handheld shots in abundance, adding excitement and unpredictability when the chase occurs. The gloomy urban scenes with gaslamps, however, are mostly atmospheric without purpose. In fact, beyond a certain point, there is no filmic element that actually tells any story. The Killer is Fassbender’s narration. The Killer is, perhaps by design, a boring character, but instead of mining him for further contradictions — say, between his thoughts and his actions — Fincher seems content to simply let the camera run without giving it a sense of presence or perspective.

Netflix

You can find absurd moments in the movie, such as when The Killer is outwitted or makes mistakes (often). Fassbender’s casting is note-perfect, as a man whose self-professed slick professionalism constantly falls by the wayside along with his bravado. Anytime Fassbender displays even mild certainty, it’s broken up by vacant or questioning stares. He wears the movie’s moral void on his face in every scene. Since he has the lion’s share of screen time — other than those brief POV shots, he’s in practically every frame — he’s tasked with commanding the entire film. And even his shaky American accent (which he pitches up in uncanny fashion, recalling his role as the title character in Danny Boyle’s 2015 movie Steve Jobs(adding to his self-constructed sense of artifice. Its central performance is the most important aspect. The KillerUnquestionable.

Unfortunately, Fassbender’s character is also a man in stasis. His ethical inflexibility aligns with his story’s depiction of cycles of pointless violence. However, the Killer appears to be a man who has no opinion on anything or anyone beyond the current scene. And while this makes for the occasionally focused subplot — like when he breaks into a Floridian man cave in an act of retribution, catalyzing an amusing, flailing fistfight that would feel at home in HBO’s Barry — his lack of ethos makes too much of The KillerThe experience is dull. There’s little dramatic challenge, and few payoffs for the pitch-black comedy it seems to set up.

It is a theory. The Killer This film is a disguised crime thriller that shows the harshness of the gig-economy. It sends the Killer through a Russian nesting doll of missions until there’s little delineation between his personal life and his profession. Fincher and Walker say little about what they show onscreen or even the brief thematic undertones that they create. Although the film’s construction is flawless, its artistic intentions are minimal. Beyond Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ nerve-wracking score, there really isn’t that much to it.

The Killer The film will be released in limited theaters on October 27. It is then streamed on Netflix starting on November 10.