It’s not always easy to relate to David Fincher’s characters, be it Gary Oldman as the screenwriter of the greatest film ever in “Mank,” the fist-flinging members of “Fight Club” or the sinful serial murderers of “Se7en” and “Zodiac.” On the contrary, the title character of Fincher’s new action thriller “The Killer” definitely seems like one of us, even with all sorts of blood on his hands.
As stylish and cool as the director’s other high-class cinematic efforts, the pulpy goodness of “The Killer” (★★★ out of four; rated R; in theaters now and streaming Friday on Netflix) is straight up more fun than a lot of Fincher outings, thanks to a dark sense of humor and Michael Fassbender’s enjoyably droll assassin.
Based on a French comic book series, the slick modern noir upends expectations right from the start: Staking out a hotel room for his latest hit in Paris, Fassbender’s unnamed hitman does yoga and goes through his methodical daily life, waiting for the right time to aim and fire through a window with uncanny precision. That said, the gig is starting to wear on him. “It’s amazing how physically exhausting it is to do nothing,” he says via voiceover, preparing to do his wet work from a WeWork.
But what seems like it’s going to be an extremely heady prestige assassin drama takes a nifty stylistic swerve toward the absurd, and an errant bullet turns the killer’s life completely upside down. After missing his target, the assassin tries to get out of town fast and to his safe house in the Dominican Republic, though it’s anything but a welcome sanctuary. He discovers that his handler (Charles Parnell), in an effort to smooth things over with the mysterious client, sent another crew of baddies to tie up loose ends and put the killer’s girlfriend (Sophie Charlotte) in the hospital.
Various people are trying to take him out, yet the killer’s existential crisis is mostly internal, which Fassbender navigates with watchable steeliness. And there are no James Bond tuxes in sight here: This killer rocks bucket hats and Hawaiian shirts, blending into various environments and crowds using a series of fake identities based on old sitcom characters (for example, “Archibald Bunker”).
However, as the killer hops from New Orleans to Florida to Chicago to take out everybody involved in the attack on his beloved, he struggles mightily, increasingly off his game the more he’s forced to depart from his predictable work life. The dude nevertheless is seriously good at living up to the movie title (and pretty handy with a nail gun).
So is Fincher, who doesn’t make bad movies. (“Zodiac,” Se7en,” “The Social Network” and “Mank” all speak for themselves, and even his debut “Alien 3” is pretty darn good in its own right.) It’s OK that “The Killer” probably won’t be a best picture contender. This is a master filmmaker putting his signature spin on a gleefully oddball B-movie – even Oscar winner Tilda Swinton seems to have a ball in a supporting role, making a whole meal out of telling a racy joke as a rival hit woman.
Fincher’s top-notch filmmaking raises the fairly straightforward narrative, and “The Killer” is aces with how it utilizes sound. The killer’s constant playing of The Smiths adds a sonic sense of nihilism to his character, while frequent Fincher collaborators Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ churning electronic score is symbolic of the main character’s roiling, stressed-out inner turmoil that belies his stoic exterior.
Fassbender’s cold-blooded protagonist isn’t presented as a hero or even an antihero that Fincher asks you to get behind. Instead, in this world of various people doing bad things and making worse decisions, he’s a flawed everyman who botches an assignment, faces some consequences and has to figure out the best way to remedy the situation. Sure, his is a heightened existence full of attack dogs and sniper rifles, yet he also has to deal with the absolutely mundane experience of sitting in the middle row of a crowded commercial flight.
That’s a “Killer” premise that most folks, even those who aren’t ruthless assassins, can understand.
