'The Killer' is fun but forgettable fare from David Fincher

The film, a graphic novel adaptation, stars Michael Fassbender as a philosophical assassin

David Fincher, one of the most acclaimed directors of the 1990s and early 21st century, took a six-year break from features that ended with Mank, a Hollywood history epic that no one seems to have much liked when it was released during the pandemic depths of late 2020. 

Now, Fincher has returned with his follow-up, a graphic novel adaptation called The Killer which doubles as his reunion with Seven screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker. 

It’s a very entertaining movie and bears a lot of Fincher’s hallmarks. It’s a much, much better film, top-to-bottom, than Mank, but overall it’s rather forgettable. 

Michael Fassbender, returning to leading man status after a few years outside of it, plays a nameless high-end assassin, who travels the globe killing people for money- and when he’s not killing, he’s philosophizing about it, in long voiceovers. He also listens to music, with Morrissey and the Smiths apparently his favorite. 

In the first act, set in Paris, the titular killer talks for a long time about his process, before carrying out a big killing that goes very wrong. He spends the rest of the movie traveling to different cities to clean up the mess, and also gain some measure of revenge. 

One by one, Fassbender confronts his former coconspirators, and the only one who really makes an impression is Tilda Swinton, who shows up in the film’s best scene (she gets to tell a tremendous anecdote about a bear.) The worst scene, though, is an incoherent fight sequence that seems lifted straight from every one of the Bourne movies. 

It’s a great-looking motion picture, for sure, but what it doesn’t do is really engage with any big ideas or interrogate much about its premise, the way past Fincher films like Fight Club, Zodiac, The Social Network, and Gone Girl. Does The Killer develop any sort of conscience, a la Eric Bana in Munich? Does he engage much with what his work means to the world? Not especially. 

The film does have a bit of an amusing running commentary about modern technology. The killer's “office” in the first sequence is in an abandoned WeWork. His Apple Watch is practically a supporting character, and one key plot point is delivered via an Amazon locker (this, in a Netflix movie.) 

It is not, however, the best Netflix movie of this season from an A-list director about a professional killer, or rather a guy pretending to be one. That would be Hit Man, director Richard Linklater’s loosely fact-based comedy-drama that debuted in Toronto; I saw and reviewed it at the New York Film Festival. 

Hitman doesn’t yet have a release date and might not even make the 2023 calendar, but it’s a better, wittier film than The Killer- and also acknowledges that oft-ignored truth that in real life, there isn’t really such a thing as a professional hitman. Sure, there are guys who work for the Mafia, and other gangs, and one-off murder-for-hire plots are a dime a dozen. But full-time professional assassins, like John Cusack in Grosse Point Blank? That’s mostly Hollywood fiction. 

The Killer arrives Friday in theaters and on Netflix on November 10. It’s minor Fincher, but still a return to form after the underwhelming Mank.