David Fincher’s “The Killer” is a meticulously crafted and masterfully rendered film about a meticulous and masterful assassin, and with Michael Fassbender in the lead role, you just couldn’t have a better triangle of material, director and actor. This is the kind of movie that had me in its grips from the opening frames and never let go — the kind of movie that has you thinking: I can’t wait to see this one again.
And again.
For nearly 30 years now, from “Seven” to “Fight Club” to “Panic Room” and “Zodiac” and “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “Gone Girl,” Fincher has been drawn to material about amoral individuals who do unspeakable things and/or the people obsessed with tracking down those individuals. Based on the French graphic novel series of the same name written by Alexis “Matz” Nolent and illustrated by Luc Jacamon, with Andrew Kevin Walker writing the screenplay and Oscar-winning cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt (“Mank”) providing the neo-noir visuals, “The Killer” opens with a brilliant extended monologue in which Fassbender’s hired gunman stakes out a penthouse apartment in Paris and waits for days on end for his prey to surface. (In a hilarious and ridiculous running joke, The Killer employs a variety of fake identities using names from a certain slice of pop culture and I’ll leave it at that; his real name is never mentioned.)
The Killer is the antithesis of those Brioni suit-wearing, luxury car-driving, fancy hotel suite-staying mercenaries we often see in the movies. His whole thing is to be blend in, to be anonymous and forgettable. He wears baggy clothes in sickly tones of beige and brown and a dopey bucket hat and comports himself like a German tourist, because “the French avoid German tourists like the rest of the world avoids mimes.” (Underneath the rumpled clothes, he’s a taut killing machine who appears to have about .0001% body fat and engages in finger-tip push-ups and elaborate yoga moves while stalking his target like a twisted version of Jimmy Stewart in “Rear Window.”)
Another thing about The Killer: Even though he’s a chillingly amoral murderer who is loyal to no country, will take any job without question and has a mantra of, “I don’t give a f---,” he’s also a deadpan observer of the ubiquitous and often bland commercialization of our world (Amazon, McDonald’s, WeWork and Wordle get name-checked) and he makes wry observations about his place in this world, e.g., when he tells us he has storage spaces filled with weapons and license plates and wardrobe changes other tools of his trades in several different states, and it’ll make for quite the episode of “Storage Wars” if they unlock one of those spaces one day.
The Killer loves to listen to The Smiths on his headphones (instant classic soundtrack!) as he goes about his business, and when his target finally appears in that apartment across the street in Paris, he waits for his heart rate to dip to 60 before squeezing the trigger — but in a career first, he misses, and in that instant, his carefully planned, emotionless and perfectly detailed life is thrown into utter chaos. A clean-up crew comes for The Killer at his gated hideaway but finds his romantic partner Magdala (Sophie Charlotte) instead, leaving her clinging to life in a hospital as The Killer vows to get revenge.
With Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross providing the pulse-quickening score and Fassbender commanding the screen in unnerving fashion, The Killer’s quest takes him from New Orleans to Florida to suburban New York and eventually Chicago, as he pieces together the puzzle that will lead him to everyone connected to the botched assassination attempt and the subsequent attack on his girlfriend. Some of his victims are fellow criminals; others are innocent “civilians” who happen to be in the wrong place at the very wrong time.
With The Killer coolly going about his business and reminding himself to stick to the plan, we’re presented with a number of Assassin Movie Tropes. Time and again, The Killer blends in with the world, quickly and casually disposing of weapons, cell phones and bodies with impressively choreographed precision. The violence is quick and unsparing, with the exception of one extended and bone-crunchingly bloody fight sequence straight out of a “Bourne” movie.
The Killer” isn’t as heavy with the social commentary as other Fincher films, but there are some sly jabs at the sometimes ridiculous hedonistic features of today’s world, e.g., a Chicago health club that is so fancy and exclusive it looks more like a four-star hotel or a European night spot.
Each of the supporting players in the small ensemble, including Charles Parnell as The Lawyer, Sala Baker as The Brute, Tilda Swinton as The Expert and Arliss Howard as The Client, gets one extended showcase sequence, and they’re uniformly fantastic. Mostly, though, this is a one-man show, with Fassbender perfectly capturing the nihilistic title character, and Fincher filling our senses with an exquisitely brutal yet beautiful mix of sights and sounds.
