The Killer (2023), David Fincher’s latest work, is at once a classic genre flick and a deeply perverted portrait of the dark realities of life inside a capitalistic society. The movie is a freakish amalgamation of The Game (1997) and Fight Club (1999) with a dash of Hitman sprinkled in, a combination of a popcorn movie with a big-headed commentary of which Fincher so often excels.
When watching The Killer, I thought of an interview Fincher did back in 2002 while promoting Panic Room (2002). He told The Guardian’s Xan Brooks that there’s a difference between a movie and a film; he explained that a movie is made for an audience, while a film is made for both the audience and the filmmakers.
“I think that The Game is a movie and Fight Club’s a film,” the director told Brooks. “I think that Fight Club is more than the sum of its parts, whereas Panic Room is the sum of its parts. I didn’t look at Panic Room and think: ‘Wow, this is gonna set the world on fire.’ These are footnote movies–guilty pleasure movies. Thrillers. Woman-trapped-in-a-house movies. They’re not particularly important.”
More than twenty years later, Fincher’s comments have been firmly translated onto the big screen with The Killer, a video-game-like assassin movie in one moment and a heady commentary in the next. It’s surely not a footnote movie, but it also might not seem like it’s particularly important, either. Yet that misdirection sets up the genius of Fincher’s construction.
The film follows Michael Fassbender’s unnamed assassin as he tries to clean up a mess after missing a target. It is a cold thriller with the heart of Fincher’s anti-capitalist (maybe even anti-society) tendencies. Yet it’s also a great time, one with enough offhanded humor to make you forget how downright fucked up the movie’s protagonist is.
The movie begins with one of the most gripping twenty minutes in recent memory, a sequence that mostly consists of Fassbender’s character wandering Paris as he awaits his next target. From the very get-go, viewers will see that The Killer is stylish, delivering the tense and gripping thrills that make Fincher such an accomplished auteur. But The Killer’s style is self-reflexive: it’s working towards a purpose, a target, much like our protagonist.
The assassin’s job is all about patience, as he explains. There’s a lot of waiting, sitting, staring into the nothingness until the fateful moment arrives. Just like Fassbender, the viewer is stuck waiting, sitting, knowing that the action is surely going to be coming soon. The film’s first chapter is all about this tension and the innate mundanity of everyday life.
Throughout the movie, Fincher shows how, in many ways, the killer isn’t much different from any other everyday worker trying to make a living. His office is an abandoned WeWork building; he eats McDonald’s at the park; he listens to The Smiths. Later, we even see Fassbender use Amazon and sign up for a two-week free trial at a gym to complete his mission. He’s just like us!
These moments are hilarious, highlighting a certain humor that isn’t always present in Fincher’s work. The director is directly questioning our humor, though. Why do we find this funny? Because it’s silly to imagine that a cold-blooded assassin who shoots nails into people’s chests uses products just like every other “normal” worker on Earth? It’s cooler to think that assassins have an underground network with their own currency and code, like the world of John Wick.
In reality, the killer is just like every other consumer in the cog of a capitalistic machine. The only real difference is that the eye of the killer is equivalent to the eye of a sniper rifle.
A Fincher film is often thrilling, whether in the form of Zodiac’s (2007) true-crime mystery or Seven’s (1995) squirm-inducing horrors. In The Killer, Fincher opts for something akin to genre fare. It feels like a live-action adaptation of the Hitman video game series, from its long assassination set-ups to its coldly brutal protagonist. Heck, it’s even broken up into chapters as if the movie were progressing from level to level.
While every movie is inherently idealistic, The Killer is unique in that it disguises its politics behind the sheer veneer of a propelling thriller. The action sequences are brutal, the mystery is constantly evolving, and the internal monologue of Fassbender’s character is fascinating. The score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is subtle but utterly electric. All in all, the movie moves, never once taking a breath of fresh air.
What makes The Killer truly remarkable, though, is that it’s working on multiple levels (pun intended). It’s not just a genre film, and it’s not just a subtle political commentary. It unfolds in front of the audience, never once spelling out what is going on. Fincher trusts his audience to understand the narrative’s events even if nobody says, “Oh gosh, you’re the killer, and I’m the guy that hired you to the job; you must be pretty mad at me for all that stuff I ordered to be done to your girlfriend who lives in the Dominican Republic.” The audience has the agency to figure everything out themselves.
Everything in The Killer feels complete, even if we do not have the whole picture. Fincher’s point is that, just like Fassbender, we can’t see the whole picture because we are all products of a machine. Even someone whose job consists of living in the shadows and murdering people isn’t above the laws of society. He, too, answers to higher powers. And he, too, needs Amazon from time to time.
Fassbender’s performance is phenomenal, further accenting the depth of the character. His cold, dead eyes belie something more complex and scary, and his offhand comedy is top-notch. Tilda Swinton, too, is outrageously good and perfectly cast in the short time she has on screen. While her scene is just one level within the story, her own dead eyes and icy perspective give the film a much-needed punch of drama.
Even if Fincher will never admit it, there is a level of self-portrait to the movie that any fan of the director can easily see. A detail-oriented man who has a cold view of society yet thrives in procedure? A man who may find art or creativity in his work yet is still shackled within the constructs of capitalism? I forgot if I was talking about Fincher or the killer – they sound the same to me, even though I’m sure Fincher isn’t holing up in a WeWork in France.
But most all viewers can likely see something relatable to the killer. Whether it be his love for McGriddles or his hatred of being amongst “the normies,” the killer is just doing his job. It’s a messed up job, of course, but it’s a job that seems to pay handsomely.
The Killer is one of Fincher’s best films and one of the year’s best movies, and I suspect its layers will continue to unravel upon rewatch. In many ways, it’s a sick movie with killer action and tense thrills. In others, it’s a thoroughly fascinating portrayal of a man stuck within the monotonous procedure of everyday society. Whatever it may be, The Killer is a must-see.
Review Courtesy of Carson Burton
Image Credit to Netflix via The Economic Times
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