The Killer (2023) Review!!

Synopsis – After a fateful near-miss an assassin battles his employers, and himself, on an international manhunt he insists isn’t personal.

My Take – With a career spanning three decades, it is quite a miracle how director David Fincher still hasn’t made a bad film. Known for his dark, atmospheric and stylish flicks, particularly Se7en (1995), Fight Club (1999), Zodiac (2007), The Social Network (2010) and Gone Girl (2014), his works speak well for themselves. Even his debut feature, Alien 3 (1992) is pretty darn good in its own right.

While his latest feature, a brutal sometimes painful-to-watch thriller, now streaming on Netflix, following the award winning Mank (2020), which sees him re-collaborate with writer Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en) is not up to the standards of his other high-class cinematic efforts, it still works due to his dark sense of approach and Michael Fassbender‘s enjoyable lead performance.

Based on the French comic books of the same name by artist Luc Jacamon and writer Alexis “Matz” Nolent, this one is simply an old-fashioned revenge tale, but the psychological shade of the whole story, along with thorough detailing of the working style of the killer, is what makes it an enticing watch. Rather than emphasizing the stylizing of the modus operandi of our title character, the film puts him in a peculiar situation and makes him face off with people who do the same thing he does.

Yes, the general lack of excitement and wordy voice-over filled screenplay can make it a tough watch for most, yet personally I was able to appreciate and generally see what director Fincher was going for. A slow-burn drama that gets a compelling tone through its visual language and pacing.

The story follows a highly disciplined assassin (Michael Fassbender), whose entire life revolves around minimizing errors, being in control, and following a set of internalized rules without emotions ever coming in the way. However, when his recent Paris job, a rather tedious assassination, goes awry, his employers turn the tables on him and get personal.

Mainly as the profile of the person he had to kill was so big that there had to be consequences for his inability, particularly with his partner Magdala (Sophie Charlotte), who gets attacked at his place in the Dominican Republic. Forcing him to go on a worldwide manhunt to eliminate everyone who was involved in that attack. Always sticking to the plan, not being distracted, and not giving into sympathies.

Though the narrative is fairly straightforward, director Fincher’s top-notch film making raises the stakes by repackaging an age-old story with a new and improved non-sentimental, non-moral-stance-taking approach. Divided into six chapters of about 20 minutes each, out of which two stand out the most. One is the first chapter, which creates a fascinating build-up and sucks you in completely, and the second is the one with The Expert (Tilda Swinton), a fellow assassin living in New York.

Working once again with screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, this is a world of isolation and random acts of violence, with the assassin living a vampire like existence of sleeping, hiding, waiting, eating, waiting some more, then finally striking on his targets. The film doesn’t try to dive into why this man is the way he is or what made him become a cold-blooded killer. It just shows it for what it is. There’s no psychological aspect or moral ground here; it is what it is.

As always, there is dark subtext in Fincher’s work and, even at its pulpiest, we’re in the headspace of awful people in the most vivid and exploratory way. The laughs extend to the fake names the killer puts on his credit cards, usually vintage sitcom characters most of us will never recognize. The film is never trying; it’s exactly what it’s set out to be.

Sure, the film ends abruptly, allowing as much closure as possible, it seems fitting, considering we’re unsure if we’re exiting the story on a positive note, or if another character will suddenly enter and end things for everyone.

Performance wise, Micheal Fassbender puts in a typically solid turn as the title character. With those intense eyes, Fassbender carries the numbness associated with the character very effectively. The character who is remorseless throughout the film can be seen in a slightly vulnerable state with minor yet effective changes in facial expressions especially in the dinner sequence with Tilda Swinton, who is terrific and fiercely funny in her small role.

While in other roles, Charles Parnell, Arliss Howard, Kerry O’Malley, Sophie Charlotte, and Sala Baker are effective. On the whole, ‘The Killer’ is a slow-burn thriller with a compelling and meticulous tone.