The Killer – first-look review

David Finch­er is among our best chron­i­clers of moral­ly grey – or indeed moral­ly bank­rupt – indi­vid­u­als, from Fight Club through to Gone Girl. In one fash­ion or anoth­er, this has been a guid­ing theme through­out his film­mak­ing career; he is drawn to char­ac­ters that are as com­pelling as they are repul­sive. He’s also a mas­ter of the Amer­i­can thriller, and many have eager­ly await­ed his return to the genre (par­tic­u­lar­ly since it seems as though his Net­flix series Mind­hunter is unlike­ly to return).

Cue The Killer, then, his reunion with Se7en screen­writer Andrew Kevin Walk­er, loose­ly adapt­ed from Alex­is ​“Matz” Nolent and Luc Jacamon’s graph­ic nov­el series of the same name. Michael Fass­ben­der plays a hit­man who prides him­self on his suc­cess rate and pro­fes­sion­al­ism; when we meet him in Paris, he’s camped out in an unoc­cu­pied WeWork office on a stake-out. In a detached voice, he reflects on his occu­pa­tion, rem­i­nis­cent of Patrick Bateman’s open­ing mono­logue from Amer­i­can Psy­cho (or per­haps The Nar­ra­tor from Fight Club). ​“Pop­eye the Sailor said it best,” he notes. “‘I am what I am.’”

As the sun ris­es and sets above the city, he goes about his dai­ly rou­tine: some light yoga; a quick McDon­alds; a few rounds of The Smiths on his iPod. He finds it eas­i­est to remain unde­tect­ed by dress­ing as a Ger­man tourist (“No one real­ly wants to inter­act with a Ger­man tourist” he says, ​“Espe­cial­ly not a Parisian.”) The anony­mous fig­ure speaks in quo­ta­tions, pop cul­ture ref­er­ences, mantras and clich­es – the most telling of which is ​“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” ​“I for­get who said that,” The Killer tells us. It was occultist Aleis­ter Crow­ley, refer­ring to the dis­cov­ery and fol­low­ing of one’s true purpose.

If the protagonist’s ​‘true will’ is to kill, he does so with­out any pas­sion. It’s more com­pul­sive, though lack­ing the sat­is­fac­tion that comes with a job well done. For The Killer, his actions are more like breath­ing. He abides by a strict set of rules (Stick to the plan; trust no one; for­go empa­thy; antic­i­pate, don’t impro­vise; fight only the bat­tle you’re paid to fight) and these have served him well. But when his lat­est job goes wrong in a split sec­ond, he finds him­self the new tar­get, and a woman he cares about sud­den­ly becomes col­lat­er­al dam­age. It might be time to bend the rules then.

Finch­er and Walk­er suc­ceed at pre­sent­ing wet work as a far less glam­orous pro­fes­sion than most media deal­ing with hit­men makes it out to be. A lot of wait­ing around, con­ve­nience food, and clean­ing up mess­es. Erik Messer­schmidt (who worked with Finch­er on Mind­hunter and Mank) posi­tions The Killer as a cog in a well-oiled machine, just a face in a crowd, until he’s very sud­den­ly not. The resis­tance to lean too heav­i­ly into the noir of it all is a smart one, push­ing back against too many com­par­isons to Fincher’s ear­li­er work. The open­ing sequence, in which we wait for The Killer to take the shot, is par­tic­u­lar­ly tense, and although not as bru­tal as some of Fincher’s back cat­a­logue, a stand-out fight scene is chaot­ic enough that it real­ly looks like two men kick­ing the ever-lov­ing Christ out of each oth­er, instead of like a chore­o­graphed dance.

There’s the dry sense of humour we’ve come to expect too, which Fass­ben­der deliv­ers game­ly. For such a pro, this hit­man is hav­ing a rather extra­or­di­nary run of bad luck, and it’s enter­tain­ing to watch him repeat­ed­ly attempt to pull him­self out of a new mess, all the while repeat­ing that he is a pro­fes­sion­al, detached from his work before all else. Per­haps there isn’t quite as much to chew on as we got with Zodi­ac or The Girl With the Drag­on Tat­too, but as a char­ac­ter study, it’s fas­ci­nat­ing that a man who talks so much can say so lit­tle, and Fassbender’s cold, indif­fer­ent gaze is well-suit­ed for a man who appears more like a shark in a buck­et hat. (His obses­sion with Mor­ris­sey and way of eat­ing a McGrid­dle with­out the bun are notable indi­ca­tions of his sociopathy.)

Matz and Jacamon’s com­ic obvi­ous­ly had much more space to tell a far-reach­ing sto­ry, which showed an assas­sin slow­ly los­ing his mind after a life­time of soli­tude and blood­shed. This two-hour imag­in­ing strips it back to a more famil­iar revenge arc, in which the pro­tag­o­nist needs to just tie up some loose ends so he can retire once and for all. It’s not exact­ly an ambi­tious plot­line for some­one like Finch­er, but it’s cer­tain­ly an engag­ing one, and the cryp­tic, con­stant­ly eva­sive pro­tag­o­nist is a puz­zle that lingers after the cred­its roll. After all, how can some­one so stepped in blood ever tru­ly get away clean?