Movie Review: In David Fincher's 'The Killer,' an assassin hides in plain sight – ABC News

It’s a noir staple to open with a little bit of narration, however as soon as the anonymous hit-man protagonist of David Fincher’s “The Killer” begins gabbing, he doesn’t cease.

As Fincher’s murderer (Michael Fassbender) awaits his goal from a excessive, unfinished flooring in a Paris constructing that appears out on the house of his mark, his internal monologue runs with a clean, affectless monotone. His musings are a mixture of skilled ideas (“Anticipate, don’t improvise”), nihilistic existential observations (“Most individuals refuse to imagine that the nice past is something greater than a chilly, infinite void”) and honest self-reflections (“I’m not distinctive, I’m simply aside”).

That final line is probably the most telling one. “The Killer” is a terse, minimalist thriller within the cool, cold-hearted custom of Jean Pierre Melville’s “Le Samouraï.” However whereas its methodical and solitary murderer acts and strikes like crafty killers we’ve seen earlier than, he blends into a contemporary background. He doesn’t put on a trench coat or fedora; he attire like a German vacationer, with a dopey bucket hat. He outlets for instruments on Amazon. He picks up provides at Residence Depot. His place in Paris is an unused WeWork house.

In “The Killer,” an agent of loss of life is hiding in plain sight. He’s an murderer for our homogeneous, company world working in the identical areas all of us do. He eats McDonalds. He drives a white Avis rental van that’s the very same as a dozen others within the rental automobile car parking zone. Sameness is his superpower.

That additionally implies that his nihilism is ours, too. “The Killer,” which begins streaming Friday on Netflix, is a thriller the place pointlessness isn’t simply lurking within the shadows. It’s in every single place, even in a film plot that grows more and more proof against providing the standard style satisfactions. Fassbender’s hitman, a background actor supreme, is a deadly manifestation of our soulless surroundings.

In that opening scene, he boasts of getting a batting common (1.000, he brags) ‘higher than Ted Williams.’ But the job goes badly. Within the ensuing turmoil, he races to erase his footsteps however not earlier than a dissatisfied consumer has his girlfriend (Sophie Charlotte) almost crushed to loss of life at their clandestine Dominican Republic house.

He embarks on a location-hopping mission to remove these accountable, an odd twist for an murderer who, at size, preaches disaffection. A lot doesn’t fairly slot in “The Killer.” That he even has a live-in girlfriend — we barely see her and his ideas by no means once more flip again to her — appears unlikely. A revenge plot additionally doesn’t fairly go well with such a dispassionate protagonist. “Forbid empathy,” he says. And the film, too, might be withholding of something like emotion. Probably the most distinct factor about Fassbender’s killer is that, like Patrick Bateman bopped to Huey Lewis and the Information, he listens solely to the Smiths.

There’s a lot pleasure to be discovered within the unnamed hit man’s proficiency, simply as there may be in Fincher’s cool finesse. Right here, the director — lengthy identified for his personal meticulous rigor — is working with some common collaborators, amongst them screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker (“Se7en”), composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross ( “The Social Community” ) and cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt (“Mank” ). And there’s a kinetic thrill to seeing Fincher again in B-movie territory. (The script relies on a French graphic novel by Alexis “Matz” Nolent.)

Particularly good is a nighttime sequence set in Florida that begins and ends with a bloodthirsty canine and in between options violent hand-to-hand fight that careens via glass and partitions. The scene, like a number of others in “The Killer,” is a filmmaking feat of management. Fassbender, a pure at enjoying a loner (see “Disgrace”), is charming all through as a result of he so possesses the film’s chief traits of guile and a deadpan humorousness.

The whole lot right here is tantalizingly near calculated perfection that it comes nearly as a shock how “The Killer” finally ends up lacking its mark. You might name it a characteristic of the movie’s existentialism, however “The Killer” more and more is working, albeit proficiently, in a vacuum. Our hitman travels from place to position — at all times with faux passports with the names of TV characters like Felix Unger, Lou Grant or Sam Malone — however we don’t get wherever deeper with him or the rest. Meaningless would be the level in “The Killer,” however at a sure level on this stylishly composed however empty vessel, you’re feeling like pleading as one other Fincher protagonist as soon as did: What’s within the field?

“The Killer,” a Netflix launch is rated R by the Movement Image Affiliation for sturdy violence, language and temporary sexuality. Operating time: 118 minutes. Two and a half stars out of 4.

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