The Killer - Review: Precise, Almost To A Fault

 

There’s something to be said for being extremely good at one specific thing. Some people make really good, complicated cuisine, but struggle with scrambled eggs. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, but rather just a fact of life. Despite some detours into character dramas and decades spanning romances, David Fincher (“Zodiac,” “The Social Network”) has always excelled at showing violent acts and violent people in starkly beautiful ways. He’s done it numerous times before, and now he’s doing it again with an adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name in “The Killer.”

Directed by Fincher and written by Andrew Kevin Walker (“8mm,” “Sleepy Hollow”), the film follows an unnamed contract killer, played by Michael Fassbender (“Steve Jobs,” “X-Men: First Class”), as he sets out to enact revenge on a list of individuals after a hit gone wrong. 

Yes, that’s all there really is to the film on a plot level, but getting inside the mind of someone like The Killer is Fincher’s specialty. There’s just something about the way he shoots violence that makes it feel so blasé, so routine. It works and the entire first fifteen minutes do a fantastic job at getting us in the head of someone who treats this stuff as simply as going to the gym or picking up milk and eggs.

Which is also why it’s so much fun to see him get thrown for a loop. Arguably the next best thing to watching someone who’s nearly perfect at a job is watching someone when they cease to be perfect at said job. It becomes a rollercoaster ride almost, and one where you and the protagonist are equally as thrown. Fassbender’s performance is phenomenal, getting into the mind of someone like this without making him seem cool or idyllic. He’s, as Fassbender and Fincher show us so well, just someone who’s really good at one particular thing.

The rest of the cast, made up of Tilda Swinton (“Vanilla Sky,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel”), Charles Parnell (“Top Gun: Maverick,” “The Last Ship”), Arliss Howard (“Full Metal Jacket,” “Mank”), Kerry O’Malley (“Brotherhood,” “Why Women Kill”) and more, do well in slotting into the world of this tale. It’s hard at any moment to tell if the versions of them we see are entirely truthful or instead the versions of them that The Killer sees, but that seems to be part of the point. This is a world based in reality but also seen through the eyes of someone cold and calculating and exceptionally harsh in his viewpoints.

A musical score from frequent Fincher collaborators Trent Reznor (“Soul,” “The Social Network”) and Atticus Ross (“Soul,” “The Social Network”) sets the electronic and robotic tone perfectly, and the camerawork from Erik Messerschmidt (“Mank,” “Mindhunter”) is smooth and graceful, almost too much, yet again matching the film’s vibe. In fact, it might actually be one too many perfectly calculating acts of perfection for this film’s sake.

It seems like a weird complaint to make, but “The Killer” is almost too perfect. There’s very little to criticize here, but very little that jumps out either. Fincher’s craft here is top notch. In anyone else’s hands, it would’ve been a far different, and likely worse, piece of work. But given his career is dotted with so many phenomenal dark genre pieces, it says a lot that as good as the film is, it still has an air of simple acceptability to it. It’s very very good, but yet also lacks anything that makes it stand out.

Truly it is ironic that a film about a contract killer, someone who’s entire job depends on fading into the background, would end up being just a tad bit too safe. This is Fincher operating in the genre he knows best, but you can’t help but also feel like he’s on autopilot a bit because of that. Which is fine, because the end product is still a ton of fun, with Fassbender turning in a great performance surrounded by a talented supporting cast. But despite the nearly flawless execution, there’s still the longing sense that the film is missing something. Just by a bit. 4/5