Alex Wheeler Movie Ops

David Fincher has found perfect pairings before. His chilliness brought into question the mythologizing of true crime in Mindhunter. Moral vacuums undercut the surface-level glitz in many of his films, as does his penchant for slick, violent action. He isn’t, I would argue, a particularly flexible director, but give him a story of violence and detachment and he’ll make the thing appealing.

That all comes together in a neat package for The Killer, an adaptation of the graphic novel series of the same name. If you’re unaware of its literary origins going in, you’ll register it when the film launches into its verbose voiceover that establishes its silent stalker. Michael Fassbender wearily watches an apartment in the opening scene, struggling to stay awake through cold boredom. He rambles on, seemingly in his mind, filling the time with philosophical ramblings that profess an absurdist worldview in all but name. Life is meaningless. His actions have no effect. He is free to do a dirty job without fear of anything worse than the inevitable endpoint that comes for us all. 

He’s there to kill a man, to carry out this job with rigid professionalism, just like he’s done many times before. Morality isn’t even on his mind, he claims. And yet, the man doth protest too much.

The arc of the movie is evident long before Fassbender’s unnamed killer misses his shot, which throws his meticulous world into chaos. It’s easy to profess apathy towards ramifications when they aren’t staring you in the face, but now Fassbender’s character has to face the music (courtesy of Fincher’s usual composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross). 

I mean, come on, this is what Fincher excels at to a T. His coldness makes the absurdity Fassbender struggles to maintain visceral, immediately bringing to mind the offputting tone of Albert Camus’ The Stranger (the overlapping plot details help, too). This isn’t an unpleasant movie. This is an unfeeling movie, a procedural about a bad man doing bad things and the world barely blinking an eye. The ease with which he deals with his fate shows how he could trick himself into such a worldview, and it leaves the viewer unsettled.

On the other hand, Fincher is a consummate entertainer, if you enjoy some brute violence and laughs at his subjects’ expense. You get the titular killer’s methodical style plenty, but the high point comes when he encounters his opposite. This target wears his violence as a shield (aided by a protective pit bull), and his target’s chaotic attack undoes the killer’s slick plans. It’s a brutal, drawn-out fight, one that takes full advantage of Fincher’s eye for striking imagery, and it’s the sequence that will remain with you after The Killer ends.

The rest of the film is much more measured, but there’s pleasure to be had as Fassbender squares off against a series of worthy adversaries and on-screen partners. Each encounter plays out different. Each plods to a predetermined end. Some are peppered with jokes about the folly of their world. This is a disciplined take on absurdism, but it’s not the most effective. 

Holding off revealing the film’s point would’ve done much to inject some energy into the proceedings, which can lean a little too far into the dour. On the other hand, this is a film about someone struggling to hold onto absurdism, not about absurdism. Getting a little outside the philosophy’s bounds is fair, but it also gives them the leeway to move even farther away from it, to really drive the difference home. Instead, The Killers clings to its main character’s stated tenent, which brings plenty of violence and a bit of comedy but isn’t the most entertaining approach.

Fassbender himself is as rigid in the role as the film is to its central idea. He’s a thoroughly unempathetic protagonist, but again, that’s the point of the film. Fassbender’s ability to maintain such a distance from the audience, deliver such loquacious voiceovers, and still give us the twitches that reveal the film’s game is a reminder of how precise an actor he can be.

The Killers is, in the end, a one-trick pony. It’s a methodical crime film, delivering a clean plot and an even cleaner central arc. It won’t surprise you. In fact, it may leave you a little miffed at its surface-level emptiness. That’s absurdism, for you, It’s the trick, and it’s one that Fincher and company pull off in style.

Release: available now in theaters and on Netflix November 10th
Director: David Fincher
Writers: Andrew Kevin Walker
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Tilda Swinton, Charles Parnell, Arliss Howard, Sala Baker