The world of hired killers is an endlessly fascinating one for filmmakers; the 2023 edition of the Venice Film Festival features no less than three, from the likes of Harmony Korine, Richard Linklater, and David Fincher. Fincher’s The Killer comes to the screen with the filmmaker’s trademark style and craft, but even as he reunites with his Seven screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker (adapting a French graphic novel), there’s nothing about this hit man (seemingly emotionless but fragile on the inside) that’s particularly different from thousands of other big-screen hit men (who are seemingly emotionless but fragile on the inside).
That’s not to say Michael Fassbender isn’t giving his material his all; it’s just that the material is more interested in what this man does than in who he is. On that procedural level, The Killer offers some insight into the quotidian details of this profession. The character’s personal fortune is often cited by other characters, but he lives a fairly stripped-down existence, eating McDonald’s, flying coach, and dressing as anonymously as possible. (In one of many voice-over monologues, he explains his non-descript wardrobe: “Parisians avoid German tourists the way the rest of the world avoids street mimes.”)
The killer’s one indulgence is his luxurious hideaway in the Dominican Republic; he tries fleeing there after botching that Paris job, only to discover that his beloved (Sophie Charlotte) has been severely beaten by representatives of his displeased employer. This sends him on a very precise, step-by-step mission of revenge against his handler (Charles Parnell) and his handler’s assistant (Kerry O’Malley), the assailants (Sala Baker and Tilda Swinton), and the billionaire (Arliss Howard) who hired them all.
Our protagonist, incidentally, is listed in the credits as “the killer,” and he seems to have almost no past, no political affiliations, and no feelings about the targets he’s hired to eliminate. Pretty much all we ever learn about him is that he’s a Gen X-er; every song in his iPod is by The Smiths, and his aliases are all names borrowed from 1970s and ’80s sitcom characters.
Fassbender’s greatest strength here is his cultivated ordinariness; as he monologues at one point, “I’m not special. I’m just apart.” This isn’t some super-cool, ice-blooded assassin; he’s always checking his Apple watch to monitor his pulse, and he constantly repeats a mantra to himself about staying focused, not improvising, and avoiding empathy. (It’s a performance that’s most successful when the actor disappears into the background, so of course Swinton all but steals the film with her one-scene monologue.)
Rather than fill in this character’s past, Walker and Fincher dote on the nuts-and-bolts of the killer’s work: He uses Google. He orders tech he needs off Amazon. He never wears elaborate Mission: Impossible masks, just a hat while keeping his head down when he’s around CCTV cameras. Cell phones get smashed after one use, guns get tossed into public garbage cans, and sometimes, body parts get dropped into bodies of water. (He’s Fincher’s most anonymous and lethal character since Edward Norton’s never-named protagonist in Fight Club.)
The straightforward nature of his job is mirrored in the unfussy cinematography by Erik Messerschmidt (also represented in Venice with Ferrari) and a score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross that kicks into high only in an intense hand-to-hand combat sequence involving Fassbender and Baker.
The Killer is a Netflix production, the streaming service known for big-budget, all-star empty spectacles like Red Notice and the Extraction films. Viewers tuning in for a graphic novel–inspired saga of murder for hire may find themselves put off by the film’s attention to granular detail; even worse, audiences might not pay it the same attention they would have in theaters, which would be to miss the point. For all the inherent familiarity of the hit-man genre, Fincher and Walker have nonetheless crafted an absorbing tale; what it has to offer that’s any different from countless similar tales lies in the minutiae rather than the mayhem.
Director: David Fincher
Screenwriter: Andrew Kevin Walker, based on the graphic novel series “The Killer,” written by Matz and illustrated by Luc Jacamon
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Arliss Howard, Charles Parnell, Gabriel Polanco, Kerry O’Malley, Emiliano Pernía, Sala Baker, Sophie Charlotte, Tilda Swinton
Producers: Céan Chaffin, William Doyle, Peter Mavromates
Executive producer: Alexandra Milchan
Director of photography: Erik Messerschmidt
Production design: Donald Graham Burt
Costume design: Cate Adams
Editing: Kirk Baxter
Music: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross
Sound: Ren Klyce
Production companies: Netflix
In English
118 minutes
