One Good Film: "The Killer" (Fincher, 2023)
David Fincher's Netflix movie is a deadpan character comedy disguised as an action film.
A regular feature for paid Watch List subscribers: I suggest one reasonably under-the-radar movie from the recent or distant past new movie, and you do what you want with that information.
David Fincher’s “The Killer” (⭐ ⭐ ⭐) seems specifically conceived to discombobulate the brain of the average viewer. Simply put, it appears to be a not-so-hot example of one thing, when it is in fact a much more interesting example of another thing. Naturally, it’s streaming on Netflix after a cursory theatrical run, where it will draw a sizable portion of the service’s 77 million US viewers, who most likely won’t get what the movie’s trying to do.
And why should they? “The Killer” is, or seems to be, a well-crafted but emotionally rote action thriller about a contract assassin (Michael Fassbender) who embarks on a bloody vendetta after a hit goes awry and his girlfriend (Sophie Charlotte) is badly beaten in retaliation. You’ve seen it all before: The amoral warrior who lives by an updated “Art of War” samurai code; the globetrotting locations; the soulless businessmen in their pristine executive suites; the safe room with an armada of guns; the auto chases; the fight scenes; the silencers. If you hadn’t noticed the tipped-over letter “i” in the film’s title font, you might mistake “The Killer” for the movie equivalent of a CVS generic, or a parody of a Michael Mann film.
But the letter “i” is tipped over, and so is Fassbender’s nameless anti-hero if you’re paying attention. For one thing, he botches an assignment in the very first scene, taking out a (mostly) innocent bystander instead of the anonymous fat cat he’s been paid to terminate. Pretty much all of the decisions he makes throughout the rest of the movie turn out to be the wrong ones, too, despite his strategizing – the silent OCD thoroughness with which he erases all traces of his presence as if someone’s watching. Which they probably aren’t.
Well, he’s silent to everybody but us. The Killer soliloquizes a lot to himself on the soundtrack, mostly repotted Sun Tzu aphorisms: “Anticipate, don’t improvise.” “Never yield an advantage.” “Fight only the battle you’re paid to fight.” They’re offered up as action dude philosophy but, really, they function as white noise, mantras to keep the doubts at bay. It’s in the gulf between these Zen bromides and the regularity with which the hero screws up that “The Killer” reveals itself as a comedy, if an extremely deadpan one. It’s a character study disguised as an action flick, about a raging neurotic desperate to convince himself he’s actually a stoic. Clue #1: When he’s not talking to us/himself, our emotionless hitman is walking around with earphones blasting The Smiths, whose gorgeously mopey bed-sit music has been the playlist for oversensitive adolescents since the late 1970s. The Killer wants us to believe he’s a sociopath, but he’s just another Sad Boy.
As he works his way up the chain of command, from the lawyer who hired him (Charles Parnell) to the brute who assaulted his girlfriend (Sala Baker) to the lady assassin hired to dispatch him (Tilda Swinton, above) to the client who’s the movie’s man behind the curtain (Arliss Howard), nothing quite pans out the way the Killer plans. The body count is high but it’s messy, whereas the whole purpose of the aphorisms in his head is to shut out the noise of a messy world. “Forbid empathy,” he repeatedly tells himself. “Empathy is weakness. Weakness is vulnerability.” But life is vulnerability. That’s probably why he’s a hitman — to snuff the uncertainty.
Based on a long-running French graphic novel, the movie is a minor entry in the filmography of the director who has given us “Zodiac,” “Se7en,” “Fight Club,” and “The Social Network.” Fincher has nevertheless fashioned “The Killer” with cool, steely panache, the filmmaking almost invisible beneath the chrome and curvature of the imagery. The supporting performances are expertly calibrated: Kerry O’Malley makes a sharp impression as the lawyer’s terrified but fast-thinking assistant, and Swinton is a whole movie unto herself as the rival assassin, who, like the hero, presents a façade of impenetrable sang-froid that crumbles as she contemplates her possible demise. Apparently, the business of death makes a person chatty. Best keep it to yourself.
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