The Killer (David Fincher, 2023)

 When a hit goes wrong, a contract killer (Michael Fassbender) finds his carefully organised life under threat from his former employer.

I do not know how to feel about The Killer.

I went in completely cold - I only knew the top line talent (David Fincher, screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker), and I didn’t even know Netflix was involved until the logo dropped.

I cannot help feeling underwhelmed - There is something breezily inconsequential about the movie, and maybe it will become more engrossing on the small screen.

Like Fincher’s Panic Room, this is a potboiler.

But there is something missing.

Maybe it is the familiarity: An existential hitman, a hit gone wrong, a loved one is harmed, a quest to kill those who wronged him.

Fincher plays with some of the genre’s style - keeping the camera at a remove, avoiding becoming too engrossed in the killer’s actions. 

Like the character, The Killer is not a movie that revels in violence. It is a movie about characters who have been damaged or hollowed out by it.

With the character’s obsession with finesse, it is hard not to read the character as an extension of the filmmaker’s own exacting process. It also feels lazy.

Maybe this movie is just what it is. Maybe my expectations were too high, or it was too familiar to live up to my initial impression of the filmmakers’ involvement.

Watching Fassbinder run around various locations, infiltrating and killing his way around the world, I started imagining the movie as his take on James Bond. Not that there are any similarities - there was such a familiarity to the movie that I was trying to keep myself engaged. 

I have never left a Fincher movie forgetting I have seen it.

I tried writing about this movie after I watched it in theatres, but I didn’t have anything to write about.

And then I forgot about it until it popped up on Netflix.

What does that say?

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