‘The Killer’ is a Triumph of Disciplined Tranquillity

David Fincher returns to thrillers with a layered character study tailor-made for loners and wannabe psychopaths

“I’m no genius,” says the titular character (Michael Fassbender) in one of the many internal dialogues in David Fincher's latest movie, The Killer. That may be true, but he’s a skilled and methodical “freelancer” who’s excellent at his job, which happens to be murdering people professionally by drawing the least amount of attention. He knows his trade inside out: The endless boredom that comes with it, the rigorous cautionary routines that keep him safe and vigilant, and the anonymity it requires. Precisely because of these elements (which Fincher doesn't downplay for one second), a big chunk of viewers found the movie “boring” and “pretty mid,” taking these crucial features for granted that just come with being a hitman. As if we would somehow already know everything about this profession because we saw a few movies in the subgenre and played some Hitman games.

Yet Fincher's genius lies in poking at that assumed knowledge as he systematically dissects and portrays every seemingly bagatelle detail one has to have down intrinsically to have a chance of making it as a career criminal. Thus numerous viewers want to read some analogy or metaphor into this straightforward narrative — all of which the director provides ground for — and forget to take the movie at face value without projecting something onto it. Yet The Killer is an intriguing character study in and of itself, with no gimmicks, that has enough layers to emerge as one of the best works the iconic filmmaker has delivered in the past ten years.

First of all, the Killer isn’t a sociopath — he aims to be one since he believes that's what this kind of work demands, but he can't quite get there. His rules, which become mantras, are there to remind him to suppress any emotion that might transpire. They are clichés like “trust no one” and “forbid empathy,” purely functioning as mementos to prevent mistakes. But once he makes the first error — frankly, rather accidentally — his self-consciousness begins to spiral. From then on, however, he instinctively falls back on routines he made to perfection to save himself from getting caught or killed. It’s all planned and calculated, covering every scenario that could possibly occur, and luck is only a negligible part of the equation. He might’ve messed up eliminating the target he was hired for, but the safety measures previously established and the omnipresent alertness he trained his mind for usually work efficiently.

What knocks his controlled attentiveness out of place is the two people sent to his hideout to murder him, who end up brutally torturing and beating up his girlfriend. And upon visiting her in the hospital, no matter how cold-blooded and unemotional he aspires to be, he gets riled up to a point that destabilizes his focus. In that scene, Fassbender’s eyes expose guilt and affection, an unguarded vulnerability that no sociopath is able to feel. His pledge of revenge, which plays out in the rest of the plot, burns on a thousand degrees regardless of how strongly he attempts to manipulate himself into a disciplined tranquillity.

The script — based on Alexis Nolent’s French comic book and written by previous collaborator Andrew Kevin Walker — supplies a playground for Fincher. And he has the most fun with it that he allowed himself to have while making a movie, probably ever. Given his reputation and back catalog of murder and serial killer-themed projects, there’s a lot to draw from. Most evidently, there’s a Tyler Durden wannabe in the Killer as well as Jack from Fight Club — which can come across as a subtle response that knocks the incel audience that co-opted it — and if you squint hard enough, you can see nuances borrowed from the infamous serial killers portrayed in Mindhunter, too. Yet The Killer’s simplicity perhaps comes closest to the director’s fifth feature, Panic Room, a straightforward thriller told in a similar fashion.

As I said, there's ground to read more into The Killer than what it is, but the truth is the film doesn’t really need all that to work. I think Fincher’s main goal here was to underline directness and highlight clarity — to almost confuse us to a point with the story's plainness. Immersing in the miniature details of execution, planning, and the constantly buzzing inner dialogue was his primary objective into which he could inject his maximalism and slick style as a filmmaker. Giving a seemingly uncomplicated character depth and personality despite the anonymity he tries to embody. And Fincher achieves all that remarkably with visual prowess and subtle sound design — painting the emotional palette of the character with reoccurring Smiths songs and a chaotic yet apt score (via Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross™) that sets the fitting vibe for every scene.

There might be unfavorable attributes in The Killer (which strictly comes down to individual preference and taste), yet no one can accuse the movie of not delivering what it set out to achieve. Fincher’s only miscalculation here (if we can call it that) is that he set the bar at making a great film instead of a potential masterpiece. And looking at his filmography, virtually made of genre-defining classics, we might need to recalibrate our expectations — or just wait ten years until The Killer re-emerges as another cult classic. It has every chance to do so.

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I’ve been taking a break from writing in the past two weeks, but before I did that, I reviewed the latest installment in Taylor Sheridan’s Western TV empire, Lawmen: Bass Reeves, for Paste and the highly anticipated return of Amazon Prime’s spectacular superhero animation series, Invincible, for Looper.

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