The Killer Review: David Fincher Barely Salvages This Formulaic Thriller

Filmmaker David Fincher has had a fascinating and diverse career. While films like Se7en, The Game, and Panic Room earlier in his tenure appealed more to genre audiences, movies like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network, and Mank earned him Oscar nominations, as those projects showcased the breadth of his talents. His latest film, The Killer, marks somewhat of a return to form for Fincher, as it's a much more straightforward story that follows an assassin. The movie showcases a number of elements that play into Fincher's strengths, though the material itself fails him, as there's little to engage with and it does little to set itself apart from a countless number of generic action titles that audiences might be more familiar seeing Liam Neeson or Jason Statham star in.

Michael Fassbender plays the titular, nameless killer, an assassin who boasts about all of the ways in which his success rate would put Ted Williams' batting average to shame. When the killer makes a mistake with a hit, though, he is forced into unfamiliar territory, as he's never felt the fallout of not pulling off a hit, making him a target in his own right that also sees him attempting to tie off all loose ends of the botched job, no matter who might stand in his way.

Longtime fans of Fincher have been excited about his reunion on this film with former collaborator Andrew Kevin Walker, who wrote Se7en and also contributed to films like The Game and Fight Club. While both Fincher's direction and Walker's script show confidence in their talents, the film's shortcomings stem from the inherent nature of the premise, with the movie being an adaptation of the comic book series of the same name from writer Alexis "Matz" Nolent and artist Luc Jacamon. It's a revenge thriller from start to finish, as our main character is punished for a mistake and he spends the rest of the movie enacting his own brand of justice on any obstacle in his way. It's an overall narrative trajectory that feels redundant, and there's little about the picture that sets itself apart from any similar fare that has grown so tiresome at the box office. 

Seemingly a key component of Fassbender's character is his impressive ability to go entirely unnoticed in the world, blending in with his surroundings due to how drab he not only looks, but also how he acts. The opening sequence, in which the killer explains his many talents and rationalization of his profession, is delivered in a stilted, monotone voiceover. There's nothing particularly interesting or compelling about the figure, which likely makes for a good assassin but doesn't make quite as well for a protagonist that the audience should invest in. The killer is consistent in his steely demeanor throughout the entire run time, whether he be utilizing disguises or other covert tactics to get close to his targets, and he never betrays this behavior. Similarly, the fallout of his faux pas in the first act of the film understandably upsets him, but it's not a cataclysmic incident that the killer could never recover from. This makes for both a story and a main character that feel entirely flat and with no stakes, which also denies us much of an entry point to invest emotionally in the killer or anything that happens to him.

Part of what makes this lack of an entry point into the story so frustrating is that the action genre has expanded so much in the last decade, and The Killer feels like a throwback to similar films from the '60s and '70s. The John Wick franchise, for example, features a similarly single-minded assassin, yet is able to establish in the original film's first act such an emotionally motivated path of vengeance that audiences can sympathize with the character's lack of emotional complexity over the course of four films. While that series, as well as many other largely forgettable entries into the subgenre, also delivers a sense of spectacle and bombast, The Killer denies the audience anything particularly exciting. Fassbender's character is entirely efficient in how he vanquishes his targets, expending no more energy than is absolutely necessary, with only one scene featuring any type of hand-to-hand fisticuffs. We'll absolutely take a movie that opts out of mindless mayhem and ludicrous violence in favor of slick direction and a focus on a one-dimensional character, though the overall experience does little to set itself apart from its peers.

Even with The Killer's emphasis on nuance and restraint, there's still plenty to enjoy for fans of the subgenre. Fassbender is incredibly watchable, even when he is plotting multiple murders with the same banality of running to the grocery store. The character and the story aim for precision in their execution, as opposed to igniting all-out war against all antagonists, which keeps the audience intrigued in how the story will resolve itself. Fincher's direction is as compelling as ever, making The Killer yet another impressive entry into his already exemplary aesthetic oeuvre. Similarly, it's another satisfying partnership between Fincher and musicians Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, as the score is subtle and straightforward, echoing the eerie efficiency of the killer. There's surely something to be said about how Fincher is notoriously meticulous and detail-oriented in his filmmaking sensibilities, which mirrors Fassbender's killer, but it seems less like an intentional, autobiographical metaphor than an interesting similarity. 

The Killer feels like a return to form for Fincher, as he abandons some of his more bloated concepts and storylines for something much more to the point. Just about any film from the visionary is going to stand out from its predecessors and its peers, based on his tonal proclivities, but even compared to some of his more barebones narratives, there's little about this storyline that really stands out as especially engaging or interesting. Add to that the fact that the lead character, who is on screen for 90% of the film's run time, takes pride in being drab and unremarkable, and you're left with an experience that feels a bit hollow. The outing feels similar to previous Fincher thrillers, yet is devoid of the narrative twists and turns that made those outings so enjoyable, though it's nice to see the filmmaker delivering something closer to an escapist crowdpleaser than what he's offered in more recent years. Sadly, The Killer is also likely to be lumped into the ever-growing list of Netflix originals that takes over the top of the streamer's charts for two weeks before it fades into complete obscurity, much like the killer himself carrying out a job exactly as intended before being forgotten completely.

Rating: 3 out of 5

The Killer lands in select theaters on October 27th and hits Netflix on November 10th.