THE KILLER– 5 STARS

Among his peers and contemporaries, David Fincher conveys a commanding control of fluidity that few filmmakers can rival in this day and age. His stringent melding of staging, cinematography, performance outcomes, editing, and music rarely, if ever, stumble or loiter. Fincher’s mise-en-scène is an authority of total precision, arguably second to none. He simply doesn’t miss his marks, which makes The Killer and its propulsive narrative about a rare and fatal mistake so much more fascinating.

LESSON #1: WHEN PERFECTION FAILS– How does Hollywood’s renowned top perfectionist portray the consequences of imperfection? Can the man even humorously fathom screwing up? That’s the question at hand with this Netflix awards contender. In the creative clutches of different filmmakers or auteurs (pick any one you want), The Killer is a comedy of errors or a bumbling tailspin where the ineptitude ulcerates. But with Fincher, momentary imperfection is corrected with even sharper perfection in return. What was slicing molecules the first time is now splitting atoms.

In The Killer, we’re watching a rigorously trained and unnamed assassin, played with every equally meticulous cell in Michael Fassbender’s body, actually miss his sniper target after a week of patient planning and preparation in Paris. Immediately recognizing his grave error with no wiggle room for a corrective second shot, the killer must enact his layered and disciplined escape plans and bolt both the scene and the city. By the time he travels internationally back to one of his safe houses in the Dominican Republic, his mistake has caught up to him where he is now the targeted loose end.

Before the catalyst gaffe in Paris and the killer’s own table-turning hunt beginning in the Caribbean and spreading into the United States through labeled chapter cards, Fincher and Fassbender employ a thick narration in The Killer that streams the disciplined consciousness of this man. What is shared and revealed in those spoken monologues flesh out an individual of pure neutrality that is pragmatic and cold, devoid of any belief or stake in luck, karma, or justice. He shows and describes himself to be a man of strict routine, including conducting his business of killing with an oft-repeated, multi-faceted code of rules steeped in planning, anticipation, distrust, holding advantages, payment, and forbidden empathy 

Few actors have the sharp composure to play this kind of part in The Killer without requiring some display of movie star showmanship. Michael Fassbender, long an exemplar of icy calculation hiding unbridled passion in the likes of Shame and X-Men villainy, was an inspired and natural choice for his delicious role. A man with his stillness and piercing eyes can paint an intensity within the most gray of moral compasses. Controlled by a tracked heartbeat and activated by a neck crack, watching this man make preparations and blankness fiery with potential energy is utterly captivating.

LESSON #2: YOU MESSED WITH THE WRONG MAN– Combining the chosen actor with his scripted character, any and every competing presence to Fassbender in The Killer, including Top Gun: Maverick’s Charles Parnell as his superior and Oscar winner Tilda Swinton as a fellow veteran assassin, picked the wrong man for confrontation and disposal. He might not be talking, but the movie sure is. His quarries don’t know what we hear in the audience with his evocative voiceover thoughts. When the bursts of trigger pressure and combat physicality are added, the man is a downright wraith of nightmares and thinly veiled societal commentary. 

LESSON #3: BOTTOMLESS SOCIETAL COMMENTARY FROM A UNIQUELY DARK MIND– We’re in the sermonized position of being privy to quote after quote, statistic after statistic, trope after trope, mantra after mantra, and code after code that represent unparalleled discipline and a concrete mindset. Bottle, can, label, chisel, posterize, or highlight a life lesson like this website does any of those homilies or diatribes and you could write volumes reading further into The Killer. With those enriched internal stances and observations, there was not a wasted soliloquy or globe-trotting maneuver in Andrew Kevin Walker’s black-hearted script (reteaming with Fincher for the first time since 1995’s Seven). 

The way the technical and artistic filmmaking measures of The Killer run parallel to the assassin’s tricks-of-the-trade and methodical details on-screen is uncanny. Just when The Killer advertises music as a “useful distraction,” Fincher doles out the main character’s personal playlist of greatest hits from The Smiths and another hypnotic digital score from double Oscar winners Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (Soul and The Social Network). Crack editor Kirk Baxter, a fellow two-time Academy Award winner (both for Fincher flicks The Social Network and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), twisted a tautness here that tunes what should be an impatient and dull trek of weird mundanity into a spine-tingling thriller you cannot turn away from.

Like the main character, The Killer and David Fincher unfurl a mercilessness honed of precision that is as impressive as it is disturbing. It is a movie that stalks its prey and you. You are as trapped as the targets. A doubled dichotomy of escapist effect like that demands respect, something Fincher was never going to lose.