‘The Killer’ Review: Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before | Venice

That The Killer is David Fincher’s first film with a runtime under two hours in more than twenty years is a telling sign of its unimposing, and sometimes even flippant, style. Its opening credits would work next to a British crime comedy series from the early-2000s, a noisy and cheaply edited montage of what could be stock images of silencers, smartphones and other assorted paraphernalia for the twenty-first century assassin. The Killer (Michael Fassbender) opens the film with a spiel about the relentlessness needed to wield his particular set of skills and how little sleep you get. Duh.

This is all to say that The Killer is almost a B-movie, committing to the trappings of its genre and embracing schlockiness like previous Fincher films Panic Room and The Game. Nothing wrong with that. But what elevates The Killer are its loftier ideas about the rules for life we impose on ourselves, and what it means to be, sometimes, unexceptional like everyone else. 

The core of The Killer’s oft-repeated manifesto is among the worst advice you’ve ever heard, and surely poison for a hitman: “Anticipate everything, never improvise.” That could have been written by Jordan Peterson, the conservative Canadian psychologist whose bestseller self-help books have exacerbated our modern fetish for rigid readiness over flexibility and freedom. Although adapting a late-90s French comic book series by writer Matz, Fincher’s film is timely in the sense that it mocks the very contemporary squarishness of its protagonist’s rules, and pokes fun at the very idea of a life lived simply according to do’s and don’ts.

A David Fincher film that laughs at obsessive methodology sounds a little like a contradiction in terms, considering his exacting style and trademark steady photography. Regular devotees will be relieved that nothing has changed there: Mank cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt returns, as does editor Kirk Baxter, who won Oscars for Fincher films The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Social Network. Other returning members of the ensemble include Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, whose score is more percussive than melodic. One sound they return to is a high-pitch synth scream, the sort of ring in the ears that follows a really loud noise. The Killer can’t seem to get away from them.

More pleasant music comes in a curious form. The Killer has an unexplored angst, which he expresses by listening exclusively to The Smiths on an old iPod. Around a dozen of the British band’s most iconic and lesser known songs populate Fincher’s film, serving as a kind of stress ball for The Killer as he strains to regulate his heart rate, which must be between 60 and 100 bpm when he pulls the trigger — at least on a standard job. Yet although Morrissey’s moping helps numb the adrenaline, the songs are by no means pacifistic. To quote a rare unused Smiths song, “Death of a Disco Dancer,” “If you think peace is a common goal / That goes to show how little you know.”

Lawless chaos is where The Killer seems to work best, but a first act plot twist alters the chemistry: a  job gone wrong sets The Killer up for reprisals that target those closest to him, forcing him on a worldwide manhunt to cover his tracks, close all loops, and anticipate everything. As always in the world of global kill lists, identities are shrouded in mystery (none more than The Killer’s, whose real name we don’t learn). Like John Wick or any Liam Neeson character from the past 20 years, fact-finding comes first, and swift accountability second.

Fincher’s films have in the past been accused of coldness; it’s certainly true that he’s more interested in what happens in moral vacuums than any prescription for “the right way to be.” But The Killer has a couple of moments of genuine sweetness, too, played well by a mostly ashen-faced Michael Fassbender, whose return to acting this year is good for the art form. His performance here most resembles his work in X-Men: First Class, in which Magneto goes on a fiery trail of revenge against the Nazis who killed his family, and can’t moderate that mission when Professor X pleads with him to let bygones be bygones. Like Magneto, The Killer doesn’t do ‘forgive and forget.’

None of The Killer’s supporting cast really have time to leave a mark, although Tilda Swinton impresses in a minor but memorable character that evokes the villain roles for which she first became famous in Hollywood. This is Fassbender’s film; he shines in the harsh spotlight of the smallest-scale and most intimately focused movie of Fincher’s career. Those expecting an iconoclastic or genre-bending thriller from the great director are likely to be disappointed. The Killer, like its protagonist, mostly does what it says on the tin, even if its broader mission statement has a lot more to it.

Grade: B+

This review is from the 2023 Venice Film Festival. The Killer will be released in select theaters in October and on Netflix November 10.