Considering the impact David Fincher’s films tend to have on us, the most remarkable thing about his most recent project is a complete lack of any impression left.
Fight Club was a decade-defining movie; Gone Girl left us shocked and confused. Se7en makes us ponder our very morality, while The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a masterful exploration of character. The Killer, on the other hand, is bland and will have very few repercussions for the world of cinema.
There is potential lurking somewhere under the surface of this somewhat boring screenplay. Michael Fassbender puts in a sturdy performance, largely relying on some impressive physical acting to convey his character’s meticulous personality, while using The Smiths’ music could have proven an inspired choice if it had been worked in effectively.
Unfortunately, after an enthralling opening sequence leading up to the misfired gunshot which sparks the plot into action, things take a significant turn for the worse. What geared up to be a unique take on an assassin story meanders painfully into a carbon copy of something we’ve all seen before.
The killer moves from scene to scene, state to state, country to country, coming across forgettable character after forgettable character. None are rememberable, none have a particularly important role to play in the grand scheme of things, and it’s therefore incredibly difficult to stay engaged with the movie.
At times, it borders on video game territory – our protagonist completes one task, is immediately faced with another, completes it, and repeat. Throw in an unoriginal punch-down with an oversized Floridian, a stereotypical family-related motivation and a non-shocking decision not to kill the final antagonist, and you have yourself what can only be described (in the worst possible sense) as a Netflix movie. It feels so safe.
To its credit, The Killer does look the part. Fincher is an incredible filmmaker on his day, and the cinematography is the stand-out feature here.
The sound mixing, on the other hand, is quite simply appalling. Whoever it was that decided to repeatedly play two seconds of a Smiths track out loud, drop it to earphone-level volume to allow Fassbender to speak, and then switch back to loud music, over and over, should hang their head in shame.
It makes the dialogue incredibly difficult to follow – your brain can’t decide whether to sing along to Morrissey or cup your ear to listen to the lead actor.
Not that the dialogue is even worth following at points. Some is painfully basic and other sections are actually annoying to listen to – few conversations in the movie feel real or authentic. Gabriel Polanco is the stand-out flop.
A more personal nitpick for me is the over-reliance the film places on modern-day technology, with smartphones, luxurious apartments, tablets and the like popping up all too frequently. I always feel this takes you out of a movie; we go to the cinema to escape from that sort of thing, not have more of it shoved in our faces.
Perhaps I’m just being grouchy, but it’s not an uncommon trend – one of the (many, many) reasons Glass Onion fared worse than the first Knives Out instalment was because of its heavy emphasis on futuristic tech.
In a year of blockbuster Oscar-contenders, it would have been nice for one of the greats of thriller cinema to release a quieter, more down-to-earth and relatable movie. The Killer promised to be just that, but the end product offers little more than a generic action flick.
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
A Critical Eye 