There’s been a hundred and one hit-man movies, but the best of them – In Bruges, Collateral, Le Samourai, Ghost Dog et al – make a point of accompanying the blood, cable ties and plastic sheeting with something sage to say about the human condition.
For a chunk of its entertaining runtime, David Fincher’s hyper-alert existential thriller, based on a French comic-book series written by Alexis Nolent (aka ‘Matz’), seems well on course to join that esteemed list. What’s not to love in finding out what happens when the man who made Seven sticks empathy into the spokes of a hitherto flawless instrument of death? Unfortunately, The Killer only fulfills part of that promise. Instead, it ends up satisfying itself with the soulless, circular arc of a genre movie, and an ending that feels depressingly like the springboard for a spin-off series.
Played with icy precision by Michael Fassbender, its unnamed assassin seems to be losing his touch when we meet him. ‘I. Don’t. Give. A. Fuck,’ he explains of his worldview in voiceover, as he prepares to draw a bead on an unknown mark in a Paris penthouse. But it’s not long later that he’s questioning himself, as calculations go awry and unfamiliar impulses bubble up. ‘How’s “I don’t give a fuck” going?’, he mutters, as the voiceover slowly morphs from cocksure to introspective.
The reason ‘I don’t give a fuck’ is going so badly turns out to be crushingly banal. A job has gone wrong and the client, via his handler and a pair of unknown assassins, has taken it out on his girlfriend (Sophie Charlotte), inexplicably fudging the job. Jason Statham does this stuff in his sleep – and we love him for it – but you’d hope The Killer would set its sights higher than a naff fridging subplot and a violent revenge mission across America.
Still, if it falls a way short of inviting comparisons with Tony Gilroy’s masterpiece of moral rediscovery, Michael Clayton – despite the brief, but electrifying presence of Tilda Swinton here – it’s always a watchable, gorgeous-looking ride, bathed in an amber glow by cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt and amped up with clinical bursts of brutality.
The opening sequence is as coolly controlled a piece of filmmaking as you’ll see
Fincher’s CV is a danse macabre of killers and it’s in the deceptive lull of pre-violence that he’s at his best. That opening, 20-odd-minute Parisian sequence is as coolly controlled a piece of filmmaking as you’ll see. It cranks up your heart rate just as Fassbender’s hitman tries to lower his to the 50 bpm he needs to squeeze the trigger.
There are other intriguing, fun character details to bulk up a sometimes glassy character. The Killer has a major thing of The Smiths (the film’s soundtrack is half Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor, half Morrissey and Johnny Marr), a penchant for a cheeky Maccas (for the anonymity and quick protein fix, not the McFlurrys) and even a working knowledge of Dylan Thomas.
Seven writer Andrew Kevin Walker’s screenplay arms him with a spiky wit, too. At one point, he explains that his choice of normcore garb – anorak, bucket hat and slacks – was inspired by a German tourist he once noticed in London. ‘And no one really wants to interact with a German tourist.’
Observed collectively, they hint that somewhere beneath the dozens of aliases, the unblinking professionalism and the accumulation of corpses might just beat the heart of a sarky, lovelorn teenager. If there is going to be a spinoff, ‘The Killer: The High School Years’ might be fun.
In cinemas worldwide Oct 27. On Netflix worldwide Nov 10.
