The version of The Killer that wants to simply be competence porn would be a perfectly fine movie. What makes it great is how much of a blunderer Fassbender is. Like so many past Fincher characters, this guy might be in the rarefied air of the most sculpted and perfect physical specimens that the human species has to offer, but it doesn’t translate into other parts of his life. The voiceover, a crutch in so many films, is played hilariously here, as he constantly misjudges results and undercuts his high-minded monk-like focus with a surprised profanity. No debrief, no consideration of what can be improved, just the mildest of surprise that things didn’t land as he expected. That this keeps happening doesn’t stop him from moving forward. The gift of looking like Michael Fassbender is confidence and a total lack of self-recrimination. He doesn’t need fancy tools when just having the will to walk into a place one is not supposed allowed in will suffice. His inherent comfort in all places makes him feel smart, but the viewer sees the truth of it.
None of that is to say that it’s not a pleasure to watch the killer in action. Fassbender’s feline grace and physical control as he moves through Fincher’s clockwork world turns every frame into a painting. Fincher’s utility as a filmmaker is the sense that everything is in its place, of the viewer being able to totally surrender to what he’s offering in the knowledge that they will be rewarded. Each new globetrotting segment offers unique environments, from wood-paneled New Orleans law offices to humid Florida apartments. What competence porn does exist comes from Fassbender’s unimpressed resourcefulness, as the internet of things makes his job incredibly easy and marks everyone in the film as overconfident, including the killer himself. This provides a constant state of comeuppance for people that are almost entirely wrapped up in international assassin rings, so there’s no need to worry about empathy or redemption.
That lack of soft feelings in The Killer also differentiates it from films like it. The gray, fallen world of the film doesn’t have much patience for anything other than satisfaction in a job well done, even when that job is murder. There’s no neighbor kid who the lead takes a shine to, or animal-human relationship. Fassbender’s killer would never save the cat. The killer takes little material satisfaction in the world, as opposed to another assassin that he later encounters. His money gets piled up in storage units, spread around the US, and his motivation isn’t so much revenge for his girlfriend as it is the natural response to someone like him in his position. There is only the job, a doomed and empty focus if ever there was one. The killer is one more contractor that can be cut loose with minimal fuss. There is no loyalty, no reward for effective service beyond the agreed upon price. The tradeoff for the people who have the ability to sever him from their employment and this plane of existence is that they have to live in the same world, and there is a lot of pleasure to be taken from The Killer in how meaningless all their security is shown to be. Their wealth is supposed to isolate them, but the outside world that they’ve treated as a distant abstraction can always find a way in.
The Killer is simply an enthralling cinematic experience, a pure distillation of what one of the greatest working directors can create. One of the decade’s best action sequences is here, alongside a fantastic chase scene. Fassbender’s magnetic physical performance heralds his long-awaited return to top-notch roles, though his signing on with Taika Waititi in the abysmal Next Goal Wins dampens that enthusiasm. This is perhaps the polar opposite of Waititi’s clownish improvisatory work,. To be in Fincher’s hands when he’s operating on this level is pure bliss. A