The Killer (2023)

November 12, 2023 1:21 PM

After a fateful near-miss, an assassin battles his employers, and himself, on an international manhunt he insists isn't personal.

Solitary, cold, methodical and unencumbered by scruples or regrets, a killer waits in the shadows, watching for his next target. Yet, the longer he waits, the more he thinks he's losing his mind, if not his cool.

Moira Macdonald: “The Killer” is both disappointing and satisfying, with pleasure and competence to be had: Its elegantly shadowed camerawork (by “Mank” cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt); Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ throbby soundscape of a score; the way Tilda Swinton’s character, named in the credits only as The Expert, pronounces “Häagen-Dazs”; Fassbender’s impeccable stillness. Until Fincher makes another great one, this odd little adventure in evil will have to tide us over.

Joanna Langfield: We’ve seen this before. And that’s okay. Under Fincher’s direction, the fire and ferocity is a sure thing. And the humor, which should have distinguished this piece, is there, even if it’s the kind of humor that makes you say “that’s funny” instead of thoroughly enjoying the goofiness. Is that just Fincher’s arm-length style? Or a reflection of star Michael Fassbender’s on screen personality? I mean he’s a terrific actor, but not one I automatically think of as light hearted.

No spoilers, but the ending feels like a bit of a surprise, leaving open the possibility for a sequel. The spinoff I would have liked to have seen is not the obvious one, but would be a flashback involving a nifty Tilda Swinton, who brings more pizzazz to her oooocooool character in just a few moments than the rest of the film delivers in two hours.

Louisa Moore: Fassbender has finally found a role that’s tailor-made to suit him, playing to every strength he has. Dare I say he is flawless here as a detail-oriented professional killer who has a penchant for noshing on protein and firing up a playlist featuring songs by the Smiths to get him in the zone. His character never reveals his name, making him an anonymous ghost in the crowd. He lives a life of routine with a job that just so happens to involve a sniper rifle. With a mantra of “anticipate, don’t improvise” and a proclivity to meticulously calculate every last detail, he’s a man who obsesses over it all. In a way, Fincher’s style mirrors his lead character, as he’s well known as being notoriously controlled and detailed.

Trailer

posted by Carillon (31 comments total)

I enjoyed this film! One thing that I think is missing from a lot of reviews I read is how the movie really underminds the assassin a lot. We're told all these mantras, and he does get some success in the end, but he fucks up a lot and has to improvise! He misses the kill shot, he gets ambushed by the Brute, he gets emotional and reveals himself to the Expert. It was meta amusing to me and was called out by Max Read in this blog, which I really enjoyed as well.

The punchline is that this is what he’s saying as he pulls the trigger, misses his target, and botches his job. Whatever complicated and ambivalent feelings The Killer has toward its main character, “admiration” is not among them. The killer thinks of himself as having an unmatched clarity about his life and the world, but the movie mostly regards him as self-deluded. He botches his hits, he forms attachments, he misunderstands his own importance. Rather than being freed by his careful planning and elaborately articulated life philosophy, he’s trapped by his own paranoias and resentments.
posted by Carillon at 1:25 PM on November 12, 2023 [6 favorites]

I think "both disappointing and satisfying" captures this movie completely. It's beautifully shot, sharply edited and very nicely paced, but after it was over my first thought was, "that's it?" The voiceover of the main character's (very limited, if not downright clichéd) philosophy of the world is so intrusive it gets goofy, and the "root for the bad guy to get the worse guys" storyline is not only predictable, but brings very little new to the hit-man genre table, aside from the fact that it's Michael Fassbender coolly bringing the character to life.

I started laughing at all the Smiths tunes after about 10 minutes; that was a particularly clunky choice as well.

But it's stylish, grim, suspenseful, mostly smart, and very violent (that one fight scene is as brutal as the naked Viggo Mortensen Turkish bath brawl in Cronenberg's Eastern Promises), and so not a bad watch if you're looking for a stylish, grim, violent crime flick. Fincher's capable of better when he has a more interesting script, but as Moira Macdonald says in the quote above, this will do until his next one.
posted by mediareport at 2:33 PM on November 12, 2023

I watched this last night and had a lot of fun with it! Beyond the Fincherian style of it all and Fassbender’s carefully calibrated performance, a lot of my enjoyment came from what Max Read pointed out as highlighted above. I felt like the movie was in dialog with Fight Club, specifically the dudes who view Tyler Durden as aspirational. It’s as if Fincher and Walker were saying, “You think you’re super cool, one of the few who see things for what they really are? Here’s what you sound like, in all of your bucket-hatted ‘I studied the blade’ dipshittery.”
posted by sgranade at 4:40 PM on November 12, 2023 [6 favorites]

This was Fincher’s funniest, bleakest, and therefore probably best, movie to date, in my humble opinion.

Although I am kinda bummed that Tilda Swinton appeared in only one scene because her character was superb.
posted by General Malaise at 4:47 PM on November 12, 2023

I'm with sgranade. The disconnect between his flat narration and his actions is darkly ironic. The movie opens with him saying how alert and attentive his is, in fully command of all situations, and then he promptly falls asleep. It just continues from there. He is constantly affirming his competency and knowledge, while his actions betray him in every scene. Him listening exclusively to The Smiths is also a betrayal: for a man who says he's devoid of empathy, he certainly enjoys mopey music.

The ending was a little abrupt, but after sitting with it for a few days, it seems fitting. He's the ultimate rich, white douche who fails upwards, despite his best effort to self-sabotage himself. I think sgranades's comment relating it to Fight Club is quite apt.

There's also something to be said about the gig economy and consumerism as well, though I'm not sure I have anything coherent to discuss. Super-quick Amazon delivery is featured as a plot point, as well as Postmates and WeWork. And for all his snootery, he eats at McDonald's and Starbucks while in Paris.

I also enjoyed the running gag of all his fake names being from old TV shows. I'm probably forgetting some, but I recall at least The Odd Couple, The Partridge Family, Happy Days and Cheers making an appearance.
posted by mrphancy at 8:28 PM on November 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

I haven't previously heard of this film or seen any promotional materials for it. From comments made above, am I correct in guessing that it's not a remake or adaptation of the 1989 John Woo film?
posted by Nerd of the North at 9:03 PM on November 12, 2023

am I correct in guessing that it's not a remake or adaptation of the 1989 John Woo film?

Correct.
posted by juv3nal at 9:06 PM on November 12, 2023

That said, it has some similarities to Jean-Pierre Melville’s hugely influential Le Samourai, which Woo has been attached to a potential remake of.
posted by juv3nal at 9:12 PM on November 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

The fight in the house in Florida is good. Some of the investigation is good. The music is often pretty good! Visually, it's ok.

Now the negatives.

I don't think it comes together very well. The first set piece is really awful because of the relentless vapid voice over. It's very tedious, and trying to get substance out of it feels like eating some pretty thin gruel. It's not an interesting point and it's not attacked very interestingly through the rest of the movie. Okay it's a soulless evil job; is Grosse Pointe Blank minus the humor romance and charm a good concept?

I think this is the kind of movie when an auteur visits a genre but doesn't really have much to say. Like Baby Driver or The Dead Don't Die. The Killer is not too fun, nor is it fully considered enough to have stuff to chew on. It's just a mediocre instance of its type. Like, opposite quadrant from Robocop.

We're told all these mantras, and he does get some success in the end, but he fucks up a lot and has to improvise!

I noticed this, and it reminded me of Spartan, where at least the dialogue is ten times better (in its Mametty way.) And I think Spartan does a better job of exploring the tension of competence-porn-flavored incompetence. (Though more macho military and less corporate platitudinous.)
posted by fleacircus at 11:58 PM on November 12, 2023 [4 favorites]

I thought it was fairly clear he was not too self-reflective, and an idiot.
* quoting people, but uh, spacing on names
* I expected someone to connect the dots of his sitcom names
* it amused me that he was a law student? Sure, there's a law student to assassin pipeline, why not
* The Smiths, yay; Morrissey... is not universally beloved
* at least he didn't kill the dog, yay
posted by Pronoiac at 2:07 AM on November 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

From the beginning, this reminded me of something of a guilty pleasure of mine, Barry Eisler's John Rain series of novels, and while it's entirely possible that this is just a coincidence, in one of them (Extremis/The Last Assassin, IIRC) another character makes a point about Rain by telling him basically the same bear hunter joke The Expert told The Killer.

I think Spartan does a better job of exploring the tension of competence-porn-flavored incompetence. (Though more macho military and less corporate platitudinous.)

I love Spartan (enough that I bought the German Blu-ray; Val Kilmer's commentary track (also on the DVD) is great). I need to think about this comparison, but the protagonist at least has the excuse of being a blunt instrument and part of a unit who due to circumstance has to function on his own rather than just being self-deluding.
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 2:28 AM on November 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

I loved this film, it's basically Mediocre White Man: The Movie. I don't see how anyone can miss that the Killer thinks of himself as an uber-competent James Bond-type, but has doesn't have any capabilities beyond the most relentlessly average person. He rents space from WeWork. He grabs a bite from McDonalds. He orders a fob duplicator off Amazon. He uses an app to rent a scooter. However he failed upward into this assassination gig, he has no particular tools or training that we can see. And, of course, he messes up the first assassination, miscalculates the dosage of night-night pills for the dog, and--this was hilarious to me--expects to have six minutes to wring an answer from the Charles Parnell character and instead the guy dies almost instantly. Somehow none of these blunders manage to shatter his self-perception as a cool, methodical badass. I've had like six of these guys as my supervisors over the years, and it's delightful to see a movie about what it would be like if one became as assassin. This is top-shelf Fincher as far as I'm concerned.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 11:09 AM on November 13, 2023 [11 favorites]

Oh, and can you imagine a dumber was to choose aliases than a string of 1970s/80s sitcom characters? Surely any competent investigative agency who realizes "Archie Bunker" is their suspect will also run searched for George Jefferson, etc. Stupidly hilarious.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 11:12 AM on November 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

it has some similarities to Jean-Pierre Melville’s hugely influential Le Samourai

Hey! Jef Costello is actually good at his job.
posted by praemunire at 11:48 AM on November 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

Surely any competent investigative agency who realizes "Archie Bunker" is their suspect

It was Archibald Bünker iirc lol.
posted by fleacircus at 1:34 PM on November 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

I enjoyed this. It lands like a quick, little slice-of-life tale, but of an assassin. It’s a very easy watch.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:36 PM on November 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

The narration was just too unemotional, made the drama too smoothed over.
posted by billsaysthis at 6:24 PM on November 13, 2023

An extremely well made snoozefest. I'm not sure Fincher is good at making ironic/satirical movies because I didn't catch any of it on first watch. I just thought this character belongs in the Sin City universe, maybe that's the joke and I took it too literally. It was really hard to not see this as Fassbender's David from Alien as a hitman. Big things have small beginnings.

The throwback to sitcom names felt like an homage to Jim Carrey's character in The Cable Guy (which is pretty awesome if it is, the characters both being delusional) or even to the character in Catch Me If You Can using Flash aliases.
posted by M Edward at 7:07 PM on November 13, 2023

The throwback to sitcom names felt like an homage to Jim Carrey's character in The Cable Guy...

Having never bothered to see The Cable Guy (not a Carrey fan) I can’t speak to that. I simply found it cute/funny how no one even once made a “hey! Just like that guy on that old show” comment. I was entertained watching to see which old tv character he was going to use this time.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:58 AM on November 14, 2023

I think some folks are overstating the "mediocre white man" stuff. At the least, I think you have to concede that Fincher wants to have it both ways with the character.

At the start of the film Our Killer is clearly a very rich, highly organized and effective (I'd say uber-competent) hit man, with a beautiful sprawling jungle compound, a strong and beautiful girlfriend who loves him so much she's willing to endure horrible torture rather than betray him (and then stabs her torturer and escapes, good for her!), a half-dozen storage units across the U.S. heavily stocked with weapons, ammo, dozens of new identities ready to go in ziploc bags and drawers full of magnetic license plates, *and* he ends up free and clear and still insanely wealthy and back in his beautiful girlfriend's arms again.

I mean, come on. There's no way he qualifies as someone who "doesn't have any capabilities beyond the most relentlessly average person." He's a world-class supervillain. When the hit goes wrong, one of his first thoughts to himself is, "This is new." Then he manages to outrun the cops while carefully disposing of all the evidence, then embarks on his ruthless investigation that goes off with very few hitches, from finding a spot to murder the cab driver in broad daylight to easily accessing a billionaire's penthouse lair.

This is not some mediocre incel schlub (though his self-mythologizing is clearly ridiculous). We can argue about whether Fincher creates an interesting balance between the killer's obvious skill and talent and 1) his bloviating philosophy and 2) his few mistakes, but I don't think you can paint the character as a complete parody of white male mediocrity based on what's actually in the movie. There's too much clichéd hitman competence porn there - though it's fun to watch, and with some sly tweaks, sure.

The movie opens with him saying how alert and attentive his is, in fully command of all situations, and then he promptly falls asleep.

I think you misread that; he knows he has to sleep, uses his clothes as a pillow, then sets his alarm to wake himself up at periodic intervals throughout the night. I'd have to rewatch, but I'm pretty sure his eyes even snap open a few seconds *before* the alarm once or twice, as if he knows exactly how much time he has to rest. I could go on but I'm walking the cat and my fingers are cold. Bottom line is I don't think this:

He is constantly affirming his competency and knowledge, while his actions betray him in every scene.

is true at all for this movie.
posted by mediareport at 3:37 PM on November 14, 2023 [9 favorites]

Tho I will add that I'd watch the movie of the private eye who manages to piece together all of the killer's loose ends and little mistakes - throwing a gun away right outside an airport, the cab company office robbery and the computer search still up on the screen when he turns it off, the dead driver, Hodges disappearing the same night his assistant dies of a broken neck at home, and (iirc) just leaving The Expert's body in the snow so soon after sitting with her in a public restaurant....I just took those as the kind of ordinary things we all routinely overlook in hitman movies, but if you want to argue those specifics were meant by Fincher as a comment on the guy's undeserved "self-perception as a cool, methodical badass," ok that could be an interesting conversation. I didn't get that feeling at all.
posted by mediareport at 3:54 PM on November 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm with you, I don't think it's his competence or capability that he's deluded about. I think what's at play is more the old genre trope of the lone assassin thinking he's cold, detached, unaffected and being wrong about it.

ending spoiler

He admits as much in the ending narration, despite the little twitch on his face that suggests he's not going to be able to leave the "life" behind as much as he might like.

posted by juv3nal at 10:34 PM on November 14, 2023 [3 favorites]

At the start of the film Our Killer is clearly a very rich, highly organized and effective (I'd say uber-competent) hit man, with a beautiful sprawling jungle compound, a strong and beautiful girlfriend who loves him so much she's willing to endure horrible torture rather than betray him (and then stabs her torturer and escapes, good for her!), a half-dozen storage units across the U.S. heavily stocked with weapons, ammo, dozens of new identities ready to go in ziploc bags and drawers full of magnetic license plates, *and* he ends up free and clear and still insanely wealthy and back in his beautiful girlfriend's arms again.

I don't think this really establishes anything other than that he's rich and other people have bought into his mythos. How did he get rich? We don't know. We certainly don't see him consistently pulling off an efficient kills. He botches the assassination, kills the Parnell character much more quickly than he expected to, gets into a very ill-advised tussle with the Brute that he almost loses. I guess he does manage to intimidate Dolores--a person with no training or preparation for physical confrontation--into giving him information and then breaks her neck pretty tidily, but even that is a violation of his mantra about never showing empathy. For that matter, after all of the trouble he goes to to find the billionaire behind it all, once he get there he issues kind of a tame warning and slinks away. It was all for nothing.

I guess I can't prove that he's always been a deluded mediocrity, but the movie doesn't provide strong reason to think he's as competent as he thinks he is. Yes, he has money and a beautiful girlfriend who is devoted to him, but I've lived in America long enough to know that that doesn't equate to competence.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 10:26 AM on November 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

the movie doesn't provide strong reason to think he's as competent as he thinks he is

I really don't understand your attempted point. The movie provides many, many reasons why the killer thinks he's as competent as he thinks he is; for one, he's been wildly successful at it in the past. In the world the movie sets up he's a longtime brilliantly effective killing machine, with huge amounts of resources set up far in advance, who fucked up his latest shot when the dominatrix suddenly moved into his line of sight. Should he have corrected for that? Yes, clearly; he had at least a half second to react (ha) but he fucked it up.

But Fincher clearly presents him as competent, not a "deluded mediocrity." There's not much support for your interpretation in the text, Pater.
posted by mediareport at 10:55 AM on November 15, 2023

We see him as having a rich life style. I don't know if that supports having been wildly successful at assassination in the past? He 'succeeds' in the movie, but I wouldn't say he was wildly competent about it. There's a lot of mistakes he makes! Perhaps every other job is also him getting lucky. We don't know, but I don't think it's wrong to assume given what we see that it's possible.
posted by Carillon at 7:45 PM on November 15, 2023

Thought it was shiny but completely empty and borimg. Much better off rewatching the Bourne Identity.

mediareport is right, he's very clearly described as competent, prior to the slip with the domme and mistakes setting in.
posted by Klipspringer at 2:44 PM on November 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

If the SOP for botching an assassination is to murder the family, then clearly he's pulled off several successful ones. Also, he says that he doesn't like sniper jobs and wishes he could do more stimulating murders. Then he goes on a string of up close kills as a personal project. And I don't think an incompetent guy lives through the fight in Florida..

I think it's a portrait of an alienated rich guy who is having some kind of crisis and is not keeping it together but I don't think that he's like a rankly incompetent nobody.

Also, what is the significance of it being a dominatrix that messes him up? Does he not want to be in control? Is he sick of his bland precision? Is he human and he needs to be loved just like everybody else does? Yet he also has this ride-or-die gf, but perhaps it's just the money speaking. TBH I think the loyal gf and awesome house kind of mess things up and don't resolve well. They're important but we're not shown enough.

Though to analyze it better I think I'd have to remember two important scenes; the confrontations with the higher-level rich guy, and the chitchat with Tilda Swinton. However imho those two scenes were boring fizzles.

And for all his snootery, he eats at McDonald's and Starbucks while in Paris.

I don't see how anyone can miss that the Killer thinks of himself as an uber-competent James Bond-type, [...] He grabs a bite from McDonalds.

I think it's interesting two people seized on McDonalds. But I don't think he has much snootery, and I don't recall any James Bond comparison (who wasn't a hitman after all). I don't think he has any cultural pretensions at all, and the McDonalds thing is more likely indicating that than undercutting. He's a guy doing a job.

Though, it's not that he's entirely deprived of the finer things in life (mansion, ride-or-die gf). He's working hard but he doesn't need to. He just doesn't have professional fulfillment.

So I think it's a portrait of a successful professional, who is alienated from his work but still compelled to do it. Perhaps like the kind of guy one finds in the upper tiers of the movie industry. But my reaction to this idea is ...... so what.

Another thing I wonder about is: he adopts a German tourist disguise in Paris because no Parisian will want to talk to a German tourist. Then he wears that everywhere. It's on the poster. I don't remember any voiceover joke like. "Nobody wants to talk to German tourists here either." I hope it's not some crap like he's dressed like a stereotypical director. When the movie started with him setting up the rifle and looking about the scope I was like, "This better not fuckin be about movies."
posted by fleacircus at 8:43 PM on November 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

Here's an interview with the costume designer, Cate Adams, in Esquire UK that includes a sketch of a "nerdy German tourist" which was an inspiration along with Liam Gallagher of Oasis.
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 2:02 AM on November 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

This would have been an infinitely better movie if Tilda Swinton had killed him.
posted by Dynex at 9:26 PM on November 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

Having seen it, I really do think this is, at least in part, some attempt at a modern commentary on Le samourai, except Jef Costello doesn't have an insufferable inner monologue.
posted by praemunire at 6:42 PM on November 22, 2023

Is he human and he needs to be loved just like everybody else does?

Well played.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:23 PM on November 22, 2023 [3 favorites]