David Fincher’s The Killer is Revenge Served Immediately and Relentlessly

And if a double-decker bus crashes into us
To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die
And if a ten-tonne truck kills the both of us
To die by your side, well, the pleasure, the privilege is mine — The Smiths

David Fincher’s The Killer is a film about the need for control in a world of chaos.  A lone assassin isolated in his own head, in his own world, must detach himself from all of the complicated human emotions that exist “down there,” where the people are.

He’s worked it all out for himself: Stick to the plan. Forbid empathy. Anticipate, don’t improvise. Weakness is vulnerability. Trust no one.

Trust no one.

Killing people for money is a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it. Besides, the Killer has convinced himself, people die all of the time in any number of ways. How are one or two more, here or there, going to make a difference? The Killer is, of course, Michael Fassbender, the titular character in Fincher’s tightly wound suspense thriller that doubles as a revenge story. 

Fassbender’s Killer, like the protagonist in the graphic novel that inspired the film, is accidentally vulnerable. He talks a good game. He has exited humanity in a way that allows him to see himself as separate from the world of regular humans so that when he pulls the trigger he feels nothing. Forbid empathy. 

But behind his steely blue eyes is a spark of humanity anyway. It’s there whether he wants it to be there or not — which is why, even if we shouldn’t care about the Killer, we somehow do. We worry for him. We want him to succeed, even if we know what he’s doing is wrong. Isn’t that the way of it with revenge movies? They give us a chance to want to see people punished? Here, it turns out the Killer does have a tender spot. His employers have worked with him long enough to know where his loved ones live, safe in his only refuge from bloodshed. If they can’t get to him, they can get to the people he cares about. His mistake? Falsely believing they might never go that far. If they could get him, wouldn’t that be enough? Trust no one. 

The Killer is as ice cold a movie as Fincher has ever made. It’s a haunting scream in the night. It’s the simmering wildness behind the glassy eyes of a perfectly still police dog. It’s everything that we can’t predict but must survive. It is haunting, lonely, dark. 

But strangely enough, it’s also funny. The protagonist is funny because the writer, Andrew Kevin Walker and the director are also funny. Their humor slips in with sly winks and knowing glances. True, people are dying right and left, that’s not the funny part. It’s the character’s inner monologue that becomes, as the movie unfurls, an unreliable narrator of sorts. Who is this guy really?

Fincher takes us into the first fresh kill where every detail has been meticulously mapped out — anticipate, don’t improvise. He’s taken care of every detail, crushed the phone, hidden himself from view, eaten at McDonald’s, done his yoga routine while running his mantra through his head to stay focused, music popping in and out — The Smiths? Nothing should go wrong because he has mandated that it can’t, it won’t. He has 100% certainty that he knows what he’s doing otherwise he wouldn’t be doing it.

But then, something goes wrong. 

Now, the hunter becomes the hunted. The Killer is really about everything that happens after that. The Killer now feels the pain of chaos and unpredictability when one missed shot sets in motion a trail of tears and bloodshed, all to re-establish what the assassin so badly needs to maintain his own sanity: order out of chaos.

The Killer is pure cinema, pure art, from minute one. It’s as clean and exacting as any film Fincher has ever made, a masterpiece by a master. But he doesn’t do it alone. He has once again assembled a team of reliable collaborators who help Fincher press his readily apparent thumbprint. 

The cinematography by Oscar-winning Erik Messerschmidt is bathed in warm browns and steely gray metallics. The propulsive score by the great Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. The clean slice-and-dice editing by the incomparable Kirk Baxter. And this time, the cynical, brilliantly dry writing by Walker, last seen plotting his way through a string of serial murders by another kind of assassin entirely, one who believed it was his job to right the wrongs of society by purging the seven deadly sins.

Then there are the actors. Fassbender, who has spilled himself out onscreen as various troubled characters, pulls it all back inside for this role. A nervous eye twitch might be the only sign of life in his façade of calm. Tilda Swinton has a memorable turn, along with Charles Parnell and Kerry O’Malley. It isn’t entirely an actor-driven film but when we witness human vulnerability exposed in moments before death, it lingers in the soul.

Just as Brad Pitt’s idealism and arrogance is ultimately crushed by his confrontation with evil, the Killer triumphs over moral qualms by denying they even exists; there are no good and bad people. There are only people. We must do whatever we have to do to survive them, to survive the world. 

He might be as much of a sociopath as John Doe in Se7en. The difference is that The Killer doesn’t take it personally. There will be no sanctimonious lectures or sadistic stunts played. The lectures come on the other end, as various targets try to wrangle their way out of their ultimate fate.  

And that’s when we get down to it. What The Killer is really about. When your number is up, your number is up. No amount of money, no wealth of knowledge, no worldly viewpoint can get you out of it.  

Death itself shadows us like an assassin. If we’re lucky, the assassin might miss and we’ll live to see another day.  Maybe it’s a car accident, maybe it’s accidental choking, maybe it’s a heart attack. We live with this constant anxiety every day of our lives. Best not to think about it. 

Fincher has made a perfect film, shot for shot in the pantheon of one the greatest living directors. Within the first five minutes of watching The Killer, like all work by the best of them, it hits you immediately. You’ve never seen anything like it because only one person can make movies like he does. He has considered all of our senses.  He delays what he knows we came for — the bloodshed. 

The Killer is a first-person narrative, which puts us in the head of the assassin. Then we’re forced to confront ourselves. Is that what we wish we could do? Set order to chaos by killing people who threaten those we love or do terrible things? With our protagonist, it must. Weakness is vulnerability.

The Killer asks the question that all revenge films do: Do we believe some deaths are justified? Are we hoping he prevails? Do we see him as a monster or as a savior? The film never answers the question because it doesn’t have to. It’s the existential angst of being human. There is only so much you can do to control your own fate when other people are involved.

If you hear anyone say this is a cold movie, and some will, remember the flip side of it — that all of us watching this movie are gifted not just with life, but with an embarrassment of riches at the hands of one of the best directors this country has ever produced.  

Fincher has reflected our world back to us, where the beauty of a song by The Smiths is fleeting, where anxiety is at the center of our daily existence everywhere you look, and where human connections are fragile because life itself is fragile. 

If we can remember that a dark assassin shadows every one of us, maybe we can plan for the minute it all fades to black. Maybe we can account of something that matters. Maybe we can make sure to leave something of value behind. Maybe we won’t be caught off guard. Maybe we will remember to embrace the beautiful life we’ve been gifted, for however long it lasts, to take nothing for granted — not a cup of coffee in an airport, not the kiss of a lover, not the view of the Paris skyline — drink them all in. They won’t last.

At the end of Se7en, Detective Somerset quotes Hemingway, “The world is a fine place and worth fighting for,” and then adds, “I agree with the second part.” The Killer is a film that agrees with the first part. So think about that, the gift of life, next time you’re tempted to fret about that plate of pasta or that new wrinkle or that mean tweet.

If death is what waits on the other side of life, then let’s have it all, as good, as ugly, as beautiful, as glorious as it gets.