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In principle, it seems incredibly perverse to use the post-rock of Manchester band The Smiths so prominently in a film like The Killer, given that it is an exotic, globe-trotting thriller about an American assassin. But in reality, it’s actually a very good choice: legend has it that the band’s singer, Morrissey, had two reasons for calling his band that. The first was that “Smith” is one of the most common and therefore unremarkable surnames in the world. The second and much more subversive theory suggests that they are also David and Maureen Smith, the brother-in-law and sister of 1960s serial killer Myra Hindley, the smartly dressed couple whose testimony uncovered the case of the Moors murderers and his beatnik likeness adorns the cover of Sonic Youth’s 1990 album “Goo”.
There’s a slim chance that David Fincher and his creative team don’t know these things, but whatever the case, his latest feature is a similarly flavored cocktail that mixes the utterly mundane with the spooky macabre, an incredibly lean and violent action film coming from him might be the most satisfying yet. That’s a bold claim to be sure, but Fincher seems to have a tendency to bore himself with his own technical brilliance as a filmmaker, resulting in strangely unresolved loose ends and films that often linger a little longer than expected. However, the killer fully embodies the will to perfection and casts a spell so beguiling that even his hilarious, pitch-black touch of absurdist humor can’t kill the mood.
Although the screenplay is by Andrew Kevin Walker, Fincher’s accomplice on 1995’s Seven, it bears more than a passing resemblance to 1999’s Fight Club – a true scandalous success that set the Blue Rinse set in This year’s topsy-turvy Venice Film Festival – “The Killer” could even be Fincher’s most autobiographical film to date. Like Fincher, the nameless main character is a purist, as killers in such films usually are. Although The Killer delivers on all the promises hinted at in the short but wonderfully lurid title sequence of juicy deaths, it is still a film about everyday life between times. The opening kill alone lasts 25 minutes, and while it would work without any dialogue, Fincher adds voiceover from star Michael Fassbender, highlighting the everyday drudgery of literally trying to get a shot.
The assassin’s voice provides a stark contrast to the images on the screen. While waiting for his prey, he becomes bored and casually remarks how easy it would be to kill the concierge or any number of passersby. He has no conscience, no beliefs (“Happiness is not real, neither is karma and justice”), but he has a philosophy: “I serve no god or country.” I don’t. Give. A. F*ck.” However, this justification will soon be put to the test. After accidentally killing a prostitute, he returns to his hideout in the Dominican Republic to find that the only person in his life (his housekeeper or is it his mistress?) has been hospitalized by two thugs – one who what “a Q” looks like Tip,” a subtle reference to a famous guest star – who were sent to find him and eliminate the only witness. Predictably, like Lee Marvin in “Point Blank,” this outrages the assassin, sending him on a journey of seething and superbly cinematic retribution.
As we all know, Michael Fassbender is not, and no, Lee Marvin, and the fact that it’s not him soon makes sense. The Killer is all about the ins and outs of being a hired killer in modern times, with surveillance cameras everywhere, Amazon pickup stations, WeWork offices, Postmates deliveries, and Airbnbs (“These super hosts like their nanny cams”). A key part of the job is therefore complete anonymity, which means the assassin dresses up like a “German tourist”, eats at McDonald’s and uses an insane amount of burner phones every week.
Jean-Pierre Melville created the template for this type of film with Alain Delon in 1967’s Le Samourai, and Jim Jarmusch refined it with Forest Whitaker, channeling the spirit of Seijun Suzuki for 1999’s Ghost Dog. However, Fincher gives the film a distinctly American flavor by sending the assassin to New Orleans, Florida and New York and giving him a series of hilarious pseudonyms that went way over the Venice audience. The name “Reuben Kincaid” (the manager of the TV series “Partridge Family”) was taken at face value, as were “Archibald Bunker” (“All in the Family”), “Felix Unger” and “Oscar Madison” (” “The Odd Couple”). As the assassin travels from place to place, his only accompaniment is the music of The Smiths, which Fincher – as he is wont to do – chops up in a way that subverts the traditional needlepoint. That means you’ll have to be quick to hear songs like “I Know It’s Over” or “Bigmouth Strikes Again,” songs that blow up the verse-chorus middle-eight tradition just as The Killer blows up genre conventions destroyed. especially with a spectacular brawl that takes place in the frustrating semi-darkness.
Fincher obviously has his fans, and this will certainly satisfy them. But “The Killer” also touches on a mainstream theme; With the Bourne films drying up and Daniel Craig retiring, there’s a huge need for this sort of thing right now. Although a franchise would be, to quote a recently disgraced British TV presenter, “unwise but not illegal,” “The Killer” offers a lurid kind of escapism that we haven’t really seen since the ’60s, a suave, cold-blooded but A very, very funny kind of savoir-faire, where the frustrated assassin reflects on his predicament and asks himself, “When was my last nice, quiet drowning?”
Title: The killer
Festival: Venice (competition)
Director: David Fincher
Screenwriter: Andrew Kevin Walker
Pour: Michael Fassbender, Charles Parnell, Kerry O’Malley
Duration: 1 hour 58 minutes