Since 1995, director David Fincher has brought his audience along on a ride down a winding road, revealing the deepest and darkest corners of human behavior. His second feature film Se7en attempts to take us inside the minds of a murderous sociopath inspired by the seven deadly sins and the two police detectives tasked with taking him into custody. Later in Zodiac (2006), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2012), and others, Fincher has found his way back to many of the same themes.
His latest effort, The Killer, follows an unnamed contract killer (Michael Fassbender, X-Men: First Class) hired to discreetly kill a high-profile individual. We watch as he prepares and waits for the perfect time to strike, but the hit goes awry. The rest of the movie focuses on the aftermath of his failure.
There’s not much dialogue between characters and we only get to see the situation unfold through the eyes and thoughts of the protagonist. Just like in Gone Girl (both Nick and Amy) and Fight Club (the unnamed Narrator played by Edward Norton), The Killer relies heavily on narration. It’s more like the latter movie in that the narration we hear is the thoughts of the unnamed Killer. It reminded me a lot of Showtime’s tv show Dexter. We hear about his process. He makes dry jokes about his victims. He tries to convince himself that what he’s doing is okay. Without these examples, the narration and style might have made a bigger impact but I couldn’t help but to think those past versions did it better.
The Killer, like all Fincher films, cannot be divorced from the director himself. Adam Nayman’s book Mind Games argues that Fincher’s fights with the Hollywood system, past and present, and his worldview paint each and every one of his movies—his previous Netflix collaboration Mank is a perfect distillation of this theory. Here he pokes fun at his own reputation as an anal retentive director. As the killer prepares to take out his next victim, he repeats his many mantras: “Stick to your plan. Anticipate, don't improvise.” He declares, “My process is purely logistical.” You can imagine Fincher saying similar words to himself as he makes an actor do a take for the 100th time. Is he trying to persuade us or himself?
The film is not without any high points. Earlier on as we watch the killer prepare for his first kill, Fincher builds real suspense from the shot’s set up all the way through the trigger pull, misfire, and escape. During my screening I was beginning to nod off—the product of a long day—that scene woke me up. His frequent score collaborators Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross do a lot to help. The movie just doesn’t sustain this energy.
Towards the end of the movie, Fincher requires The Killer and The Expert, a fellow hitwoman who tried to take him out as insurance for his earlier failure (Tilda Swinton, Doctor Strange), to execute a face-off. For me it was one of the film’s best scenes, taking what Swinton and Fassbender do best, playing off one another, and injecting it into a movie without much intra-character dialogue. It reminded me of similar faceoffs in Michael Mann’s Heat, between Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, and the bar scene in Inglourious Basterds (which also features Fassbender). Many of the film’s moral and meta questions are answered through this scene. When the killer is forced to communicate with others, The Expert and The Lawyer - Hodges (Charles Parnell, Top Gun: Maverick), the movie is better for it.
The Killer encapsulates all of what Fincher does great and what he doesn’t. He has always thrived in the darkness, both literally and metaphorically. His set designs and lack of lighting cast an ominous shadow over his films. And he’s also shown a curiosity for the bad within human nature. On the other hand, he is inconsistent in picking his movie’s subject matter. At its best you get The Social Network, Zodiac, and Se7en. This is among some of his worst.
He’ll never make a BAD movie but he too often makes movies that makes me say, “ok…and?”
Will you go see it?