The Killer (3/5 Stars)

I wonder who the narrator is speaking to in Director David Fincher’s latest movie The Killer. Usually a voiceover is directed towards the audience, but here the character involved, an assassin played by Michael Fassbender, is not the type of person who would choose to have an audience. Perhaps what we are witnessing is an internal monologue. Perhaps The Killer is talking to himself. 

Perhaps David Fincher is talking to himself here. The Killer is a competent and slick thriller, directed with competence and acted with proficiency, but it is not a crowd pleaser and doesn’t try to be. It follows an assassin whose philosophy does not inspire sympathy and whose outlook does not change in any distinct way. There is no character development in this movie. 

The plot is simple. The assassin botches an assignment. Then, because of his mistake, his agent attacks his hideout in order to “avoid blowback”. Presumably the agent, a lawyer played by Charles Parnell, wanted to kill the assassin, but the second set of killers never have a chance because they don’t attack the hideout while the assassin is home. Instead of waiting, they go ahead and ransack his place and beat up his girl. And then they leave for some reason. Maybe they all thought that the assassin would just go into hiding for the rest of his life.

The assassin doesn’t go into hiding. Instead, he methodically kills everyone involved one-by-one. Is this really necessary? It doesn’t appear that it is. It doesn’t even appear to be revenge. It is presumed in the movie that the attack on his hideout is to be expected since he screwed up the hit. Or if it is revenge, it is totally disproportionate. (What did the taxi driver ever do?) Then, after killing a lot of people, the assassin does not kill a particular character. That basically confirms this movie’s complete lack of any normal sense of justice. The happy ending was not satisfying to me.

 The Killer is well made as all David Fincher movies tend to be. There are colorful locations and at least one intense physical fight. But really, the movie is a lark. It exists but does not need to. I’m not sure it adds all that much to the crowded genre about professional assassins.