The last time David Fincher made a movie for Netflix, it got 10 Oscar nominations. That was the 2020 Hollywood historical drama Mank. On The Killer, which heads to the streamer after a short cinema run, the director of previous awards-bait films like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Social Network swings back from prestige to pulp. Though he’s done that with the flair that marked his previous body-count films like Se7en, Zodiac and the FBI TV series Mindhunter.
Adapted from a series of French graphic novels, it’s the straightforward story of Michael Fassbender’s well-paid assassin, who traverses the globe à la Jason Bourne.
We know he’s a serious mercenary who doesn’t give two hoots because the gun-for-hire’s droll voice-over reiterates his credo throughout Fincher’s beautifully photographed, amber-tinged travelogue, which takes him from a failed hit in Paris to the Dominican Republic and then Florida. As if to remind himself, the intentionally unmemorable, beige-clothed killer incants, “stick to the plan. Anticipate, don’t improvise” and other precepts from the hitman’s handbook.
Despite his commitment to routine – the yoga; the timed sleep deprivation; the litany of Smiths’ songs in a playlist cutely titled “Work” – when the hunter becomes the hunted, it’s inevitable that this killer will trip and break his own rule.
Fincher’s latest film is a fascinatingly forensic dissection of a dangerous profession, and this time also a gripping action flick.
With a cameo from Tilda Swinton, and the most extraordinary sound design yet from regular collaborators Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, The Killer – well worth seeing on the big screen – is transformed from an ordinary murderer movie into a stylish and riveting thriller.
★★★★
The Killer directed by David Fincher is in cinemas now, Netflix November 10