THB #432: The Killer

I kinda love The Killer.

And I am completely sympathetic to those who really, really don’t like The Killer.

As many have said, it is as Fincher-y as Fincher gets. In so many ways, it feels like a kissing cousin of The Counselor, which also starred Michael Fassbender (in a more charming movie star kind of role), and had the same freezing cold heart, though a lot more Ridley Scott heat on the outside. I guess not coincidentally, Fassbender’s performance is not terribly far from his turn as David in Scott’s Alien re-quels.

The first thing that struck me about the film is that David Fincher screams at us, from the first frame, that he made this for Netflix, meaning he made it for television. Not that there is anything wrong with that. It’s a different conversation, but filmmakers aren’t dumb and they all know that no matter what variation on theatrical these films get, they are meant for a television audience. And a big one, in the case of Netflix.

Regardless of Fincher being one of our finest filmmakers and showing off for the whole hour and fifty-nine minutes, the credits are absolutely TV credits. I guess he never intends to make a Mission: Impossible with Tom Cruise telling him what to do or a Bond movie with Barbara Broccoli telling him what to do, so he did his version of M:I credits from the top… getting through the entire list in 52 seconds. (There is another TV theme through the film… but you should find that yourself.)

The Killer is David Fincher’s bad guy version of Taken, though unlike silent man Liam Neeson, Fassbender will not shut up… on the inside, which we hear. He lives in a bubble of his own creation, with his thoughts memorized from books and lessons on the job of killing, repeated in an endless cycle, the only new information allowed being the details of the assignment in front of him.

Does this annoy you?

I hear you.