Movies…with a little bit of obscure culture and sports mixed in
David Fincher. I love this man. It’s about time I wrote this review. The movie has been stirring in my head for long enough, so time to put some pen down on paper, or really fingertips to keys.
“After a fateful near-miss, an assassin battles his employers and himself, on an international manhunt he insists isn’t personal.”
Director: David FIncher
Writer: Alexis Nolent, Luc Jacamon, Andrew Kevin Walker
Starring: Michael Fassbnder, Tilda Swinton, Charles Parnell, Arliss Howard, Kerry O’Malley
Release Date: November 10, 2023
IMDB
David Fincher. I love this man. It’s about time I wrote this review. The movie has been stirring in my head for long enough, so time to put some pen down on paper, or really fingertips to keys.
The Killer (Michael Fassbender) is on assignment in Paris waiting for The Target (Endre Hules) to arrive in a hotel. He misses his shot to kill The Target, instead killing a dominatrix prostitute (Monique Ganderton) who entered the room with the target. The Killer returns home to the Dominican Republic to find his residence has been broken into and his girlfriend Magdala (Sophie Charlotte) has been tortured to near death.
The detail-oriented hitman starts tracking down everyone involved with the attack on his love interest. The Killer finds a taxi driver who spills details about two individuals we come to know as The Expert (Tilda Swinton) and The Brute (Sala Baker). With this knowledge The Killer travels to visit the lawyer Hodges (Charles Parnell) who is the middle-man for the client who initially wanted The Target dead in Paris.
Hodges refuses to give up who hired him to the Killer. Thankfully for the Killer’s sake, Hodge’s secretary Dolores (Kerry O’Malley) is willing to give him the information he needs. Now the Killer is armed with the locations of The Expert and The Brute, as well as a line on the original Client.
The Killer is broken up into six chapters, following the guidelines set out by the French graphic novel The Killer by Luc Jacamon and Matz that the movie is based on. In each chapter The Killer goes through a transformation of a sort, all of which add up to an ending that shines lighter than many other previous Fincher stories.
Now let’s get into the fun stuff. Spoilers ahead.
The ending to The Killer is not what one expects. There isn’t a big gun fight or a one-on-one duel to the death. There are a pair of conversations. One between two men, and another taking place in our narrator’s head.
The Killer finally comes face-to-face with Client, known as Claybourne (Arliss Howard). The man, fueled by revenge, easily breaks into the multi-millionaire’s luxury residence and confronts the top of the steeple with questions about Hodges, The Target, and the aftermath. Claybourne pleads that he has no idea what has transgressed over the recent days and in a shocking moment of trust and empathy, the Killer believes him.
The Killer lets Claybourne off the hook. The Killer’s task, and transformation, is complete. But is it everlasting?
The last scene of the movie takes place in a sunny tropical paradise with The Killer lying next to his romantic partner. He is now basking in the sun, which is in stark contrast to the beginning of The Killer when we met him freezing in a Parsian industrial attic with a space heater.
At the start of the movie The Killer talks about how the few always take advantage of the many, and The Killer associated himself with this upper class.
“From the beginning of history, the few have always exploited the many. This is the cornerstone of civilization. The blood and mortar that binds all bricks. Whatever it takes, make sure you’re one of the few, not one of the many.”
Notice The Killer is wearing a Hawaiian shirt…meaning he may want to be part of the “many”, but he can’t get there at this point.
Compare that quote to the end of his tale when he states:
“Or maybe you’re not one of the few. Maybe you are just like me. One of the many.”
The man has changed, but the change is not permanent. The last frame of The Killer shows The Killer himself having an involuntary spasm after calling himself “one of the many”.
The Killer can’t get through saying that sentence without a twitch. He is already showing cracks that he doesn’t want or belong to “the many.” The Killer still wants to lore over the rest of us with his elevated sense of morals and values. He wants to thrive in the survival of the fittest world rather than seep into the background. The Killer leaves a wisp of murderous hitman cologne when he threatens Claybourne with a terrible death if he ever senses trouble, but threatening violence and committing are very different things.
How does The Killer adapt to being the small fish in a big pond when he is used to being the man shooting fish in a barrel? That sounds like a good question for Fincher and company.
Both of Fincher’s Netflix originals have had a biographical tone. Mank (2020) is literally written by Fincher’s father and tells the story of a writer and director trying to buck the Hollywood system. The Killer is not as on the nose, but the main character’s fixation with cynicism, preparation and perfection is emblematic of Fincher’s personality when filmmaking.
The Killer and Fincher are both precise. They run things over in their minds thousands of times over, planning out every movement. They control everything they can control, and they do it with the finest amount of detail allowable.
But circumstances change, and people are required to adapt. We see The Killer let go in this movie, slowly shedding some of his patterns and habits in order to get to his end goal. Fincher, is he changing? In terms of his filmmaking, there is no degradation at all. But ain terms of distribution? He is bending the knee to Netflix with the current four film contract, meaning that he has been working with a production studio hand-in-hand. His first movie Alien 3 (1992) was nearly derailed because of studio interference, but now Fincher is finding a new mold to sculpt from.
Now admittedly, Netflix’s control doesn’t seem as stringent as 20th Century Fox in the early 1990s. Fincher has commented how Netflix hasn’t quibbled once when it came down to budgets. They let him roam free and work on projects he passionately wants.
But can this relationship stay on course? Or will Fincher inevitably twitch when Netflix begins to worry about cost. Is there a breaking point where Fincher is going to go back to being a filmmaking nomad unwilling to compromise for what he wants? We don’t know, yet.
What we do know is that The Killer has been on Fincher’s mind for nearly 20 years. This has been a passion project of his and it finally came to fruition with the help of Michael Fassbender.
A candidate for “The Most Interesting Man In The World”, Fassbender returns to the big screen for the first time in four years with outstanding flourish. Long behind him are the struggles of The Snowman (2017) and Dark Phoenix (2019). The Killer is a return to form for the two time Oscar nominated German actor.
Fassbender’s calm and introspective persona as The Killer reminds of Norman Bates from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). You look at the men themselves and they are not intimidating people. Both are slim, and move slowly throughout life when necessary. They are strange, but being strange is not a crime. However, when tipped past the edge or driven by a bigger purpose, both Bates and The Killer spring into action and commit violence without repentance. Both are driven to protect those they love as well, granted Norman’s is his deceased mom and The Killer’s is his still alive girlfriend.
The other “Psycho” movie The Killer gets appropriately compared to is American Psycho (2000). This is apt for sure because it has much more comedy blended into the screenplay, and Patrick Bateman is a man bursting at the seams trying to hide his change. Batemen is a man working in the world of corporate business, where elites hang with other elites and don’t squabble with the “many”. Both The Killer and American Psycho also have lots of inner dialogue and voiceover work.
And no one does voiceover better than David Fincher.
The Killer opens up with a 27-minute video montage with zero lines of dialogue spoken by any characters. The only thing we hear during this Rear Window (1954) homage is The Killer bashing society with eloquent vocabulary while also explaining his very personal and over-the-top preparedness to absolutely no one but himself.
That is why The Killer is a truly fucked up therapy session. We see The Killer working through things at a very deep level only to find out that who he sees himself as is not set in stone. He is malleable, but even when he convinces himself that change is okay, that lurking monster beneath will continue barking.
Fincher is working through many of his own personal character traits, addressing the tendencies and faults of someone who is a perfectionist with a dark outlook on humanity. The ending seems like a happy ending, like Fincher’s relationship with the movie making industry now, but underneath is the ultimate individualist who won’t play by a bigger power’s rules.
The Killer is streaming on Netflix, while Fincher allows it.
STANKO RATING: A-
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