The Killer movie review: David Fincher’s new Netflix film is more drudgerous than dangerous

Played by Michael Fassbender in the sort of performance that often renders the protagonist indistinguishable from a statue you might ignore in a hotel lobby, the Killer remains unnamed and ambiguous throughout the film. His wall-to-wall voiceover borders on parody, which is precisely what separates him from the protagonists of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï and Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive. Like them, the Killer also lives by a set of rules; never improvise, follow the plan, etc, etc. It would be dry if it weren’t for Fincher’s unexpectedly comical presentation of the material.

For instance, several scenes in the movie unfold with Morrissey’s mellifluous voice in the background, creating a sort of contrast with the Killer’s emotional coldness that the director seems to find very amusing. The background score by his regular collaborators Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, on the other hand, is mostly a collection of guttural rumblings in the name of music. Remember when he took a stab at similar dramatic irony in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, when he made the famously unpleasant Lisbeth Salander a fan of Happy Meals? It’s all very strange.

A response to his past work — Fincher’s fascination for murderous men is about as popular as his reputation as a methodical task-master — The Killer reunites him with his Se7en screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker. This is their joint project to unpack past cynicism, and investigate if it was worth it or not. “Forbid empathy, empathy is weakness, weakness is vulnerability,” is a part of the mantra that the Killer recites to himself (and us) before every job. He has survived this long only because of the cold distance that he maintains at all times. He views a McDonald’s meal, for instance, as “10 grams of protein in exchange for one euro.” He views people, on the other hand, as walking, talking bags of meat. But for all his posturing — the Killer often behaves like somebody who knows they’re in an assassin movie — he frequently finds himself at an emotional crossroads.

The plot only kicks into motion after he botches a job seemingly for the first time in his life, and then goes on a murderous rampage against a trio of mundane characters who’ve come to consider him a loose end that needs tightening. One of them is played by Tilda Swinton in a scene so misleading that you almost want to slap yourself for allowing Fincher to play you so easily. At this stage in the movie, he knows that you’re going to be scrounging to find some meaning in all the emptiness, and nobody does cynical subversion better than him.

“It’s amazing how physically exhausting it can be to do nothing,” the Killer drawls, as he performs brisk yoga and naps next to an electric heater at an abandoned WeWork, looking like the incognito mode icon on Google Chrome come to life. There are also references to other corporations such as Amazon, but as with The Smiths soundtrack, any attempt to decipher the meaning behind this is going to be a shot in the dark, at best. Perhaps it’s Fincher’s way of underlining how accessible tools of murder and subterfuge actually are to the sort of people who’d be in the market for them?

But unlike most other movies that are about so little, The Killer doesn’t exactly invite introspection or analysis. It treats you, the viewer, with exactly the sort of emotional distance that its protagonist treats the world. It’s baffling why Fincher, a man who could conceivably do anything he wants at this stage in his career, would devote his time to something as inconsequential as this. As always, his direction is flawless, but ultimately, The Killer a pointless film about the pointlessness of existence, which might not be what most people who tune in would want from a slick assassin thriller.