REVIEW: The Killer [2023]

Rating: R | Runtime: 118 minutes
Release Date: October 27th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Netflix
Director(s): David Fincher
Writer(s): Andrew Kevin Walker / Alexis Nolent & Luc Jacamon (graphic novel)

Fight only the battle you’re paid to fight.

If you ever wanted to see just how conducive twenty-first century technology is to assassin work, look no further than David Fincher’s The Killer. Adapted by Seven scribe Andrew Kevin Walker from Alexis Nolent and Luc Jacamon’s long-running comic series, the film shines a light on a world entrenched in the post-capitalism identity of convenience to the point where everyone is being watched despite nobody actually paying attention. Delivery drivers come and go without credentials. Office space is emptied and rented without oversight. As long as your payment clears, you never have to speak to anyone face to face.

It’s the perfect setting for a man like the titular contractor played by Michael Fassbender. He can be out in the open. He can purchase whatever tools he needs on Amazon. With a few dozen fake identities (how great that no one recognizes his names from old sitcoms), his paper trail can exist in the shadows while his body operates in public. So, it shouldn’t be surprising that the one liability anyone in this job has is the person who does keep records. When everyone is little more than a bank account number, those unknown pieces of paper connecting said digits to a name or address is akin to a death warrant.

Think of this film as a corporate John Wick. It’s about revenge (a job gone wrong leaves Fassbender’s girlfriend in the hospital as assassins show up at his door to tie off loose ends) and it exists solely in the headspace and environments of the lead character’s ilk. Civilians become window-dressing as Fassbender narrates the monotony and mantras that keep him alive. Because if you anticipate rather than improvise, you cannot be caught off-guard. If you’re willing to walk away and treat everything as a job without emotion, you can never get invested enough to risk making things personal.

This go-round is personal, though. Whether he wants it to be or not. Just as his client bought efficiency and success, this man’s girlfriend’s injuries have hired him to deliver the same level of professionalism and efficacy towards payback. That means following the trail and disposing of bodies. He does his best to make them look accidental (if he leaves a body behind at all), keeping his own footsteps in South America and New York erased from prying eyes that might connect these deaths with a fateful gunshot in Paris. He’s methodical. Pragmatic. Ruthless. He presses play on some The Smiths songs and does what needs to be done.

That means keeping a clear head. Sleeping well. Yoga. His mind and body is a temple he sells to an elite tax bracket that can afford his services to kill people—good or bad. He’ll need it going up against his employer (Charles Parnell), a roided-out wild card (Sala Baker), a posh contemporary (Tilda Swinton), and the man with the money (Arliss Howard). Not just to ensure they’re taken off the board, but to simply return home in one piece. Because he demands that respect. As a working man pushed around by the rich, he demands loyalty for a job well done. Rather than strike to get it, he goes on the offensive. If he lives, he wins.