The same year when John Woo is shooting the remake of The Killer (the Korean revenge movie that made him famous in the ‘80s), another The Killer is presented to the world audience. After its success at the Mostra Internazionale Del Cinema di Venezia 80, where it did not win the Golden Lion for which it was nominated but received a special mention Soundtrack Stars award, The Killer is finally released on Netflix.
It’s impossible for David Fincher to do a mediocre work, as proven by the fact that most of the 13 features he has directed have entered film history and the collective imagination. Films such as Seven (1995) The Game (1997), Fight Club (1999), Panic Club (2002), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), The Social Network (2010) The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011), Gone Girl (2014)- have entered the temple of contemporary cults. Perhaps this will be the case with The Killer. Although it is still too early to tell.
Michael Fassbender plays the role of a methodical hitman in this revenge movie depicted with incredibly calm tones despite the core of the story it tells: that of a bloody fact, which is the transposition for the big screen of the eponymous comic series written by Matz and illustrated by Luc Jacamon (Le Tueur).
The story opens on the disciplined daily routine of a professional contract killer, who waits for his intended victim from an apartment under renovation in Paris. Slowness characterizes his profession, which one might consider fast and scaly, but instead is made up mostly of boredom. Few hours of sleep, many of yoga and listening to The Smiths, a few phone calls with his (initially anonymous) superiors, and sometimes a stroll outside, just to grab a McDonald meal and ingest a minimal daily dose of protein.
The cornerstones of his morality and his personal rules are repeated like a mantra or a self-meditation tape training by the voice over that accompanies a good part of the narrative-especially the beginning. Thus, making the audience aware of the glaciality of the protagonists’ inner thoughts (very inner, as he barely speaks). Keep the goal in mind, trust no one, and leave no room for empathy, which is weakness. Thus, when he fails his mission and kills a prostitute instead of the client’s intended victim, a domino effect of reprisals is set off: the woman he loves – his only weakness – has been hurt – and now actions must be taken.
And for a hit man, action is a chain of killings that follows the usual narrative junctures typical of high -tension movies, but nonetheless is effective. Especially when David Fincher is behind the camera. The director consistently disregards the audience’s expectations, leading them to believe that empathy will finally win out over the protagonist, and that he will indeed spare someone…perhaps that kind of secretary who does not want to beg him but eventually begs him, or perhaps The Expert.
Nameless and described as similar to a “q-tip” and interpreted by Tilda Swinton, this character is by far the most interesting, and the sequence that leads to her killing for sure the most epic one in the movie, taking place between a gourmet restaurant and a riverside garden.
Fassbender and Swinton silently and metaphorically slaughter each other in their stunning acting performance that is a masterpiece of pacing, timing and energetic exchange, orchestrated by perfect directing choices. This eventually leads to a very unexpected death: literally foreseen and forewarned, yet still unexpected. This is David Fincher. You don’t know what he does to you, and how he plays with your mind, yet he does so majestically.
The Killer will keep up with this icy style until the end, demonstrating how authorship can be maximally expressed even in a genre film, but above all, showing how the union of genius talents-in which one must certainly include cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt (Oscar winner in 2021 for Mank) and the screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, can turn a factually trivial and “already seen” story to a piece of great intensity and artistic value.
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