To the best of my ability this review contains no plot spoilers
David Fincher has directed perhaps every man's 'favorite' film: Fight Club. He's also directed a slew of other films that are solid but I won't pretend to have seen them all. The last two of his I recall watching were Gone Girl and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Now he's back with a Netflix produced film called The Killer.
This movie didn't get a big splash in the cinema from what I could tell - it had a limited release but otherwise appears to be a 'direct-to-Netflix' special. Perhaps that is indicative of the pacing on display. The current zeitgeist is fast paced - think John Wick and its sequels. Relentless action sequences hamfisted around a story that sort of make sense. It's non stop and frantic - for some reason we are still living in Jason Bourne's world but with slightly less shaky camera work.
The Killer goes against the grain. It's a slow burn. Tik-Tok addicted teens will be bored and give up on it. Their loss, your gain. This is an expression of minimalism and detail in modern cinema. Michael Fassbender plays the lead and speaks 90% of the dialog in this film. He narrates in a subtly different tone to how his character actually speaks that belies a calmness our inner voice always has. He's a human inhuman, a calculating killer who fucks up and is now on a mission. The plot really is that simple but this is truly a film where less is more.
Fincher always gives just enough explanation, never more. He is brave enough to drag out a certain degree of monotony that a hypothetical assassin is likely to face, it's all tinged with an air of expectance though. An expectance that ironically comes from us all being exhausted by the constant hyper action. A good portion of the film I waited for it to come, and at times there is some. It is never overdone though, the contrast of the fight scene to the tranquility of the waiting. A study in contrasting energy.
Energy that perhaps is actually best captured in the video-game series Hitman. Hitman even had a film, the lead character Agent 47 though was badly portrayed. The Killer is the true hidden Hitman film with an added depth. Fans of the genre and the games will appreciate this film on a different level, a study in murder and revenge. Certainly there is some window dressing about power in this film but it never looses sight of being a straight forward slow burn thriller.
Honestly it is a bit unclear what Fincher is saying with the small moments of dialog and certain casting. Tilda Swinton's appearance is memorable, for a moment. What she talks about is forgettable but the frailty of her character and life choices are stark. Fassbender is supreme as the quiet professional, an archetype of a man who has erected armor around himself to get the job done. Why? He doesn't know, not really anyway. Perhaps that is the inside joke from this film - the grand explanations of violence often just melt away to the simplest. Violence has an element of enjoyment to it that we are always drawn to.
The film has many small details on a deeper inspection. The paranoia of Fassbender's character evolves over the film. It mirrors his character's sense of control over events. There are small moments that you catch and smile at, the ingenious use of a courier, the manipulation of the convenience of modern life. The soundtrack is strung together by The Smiths in just the right way. Not everything is perfect however, perhaps we get a few too many airport montages, perhaps one too many resting moments. That too might be part of the point, portraying the real burden our protagonist engages in right to the end.
It's a film that keeps you guessing and just on the edge, it requires patience and rewards you with thoughtful vengance. It is a refreshing moment of calm violence.
I'm going to check this out, thanks