With Michael Fassbender in the title role of the film The killerDavid Fincher fails to deliver a feature film of his caliber Fight Club, Seven And The social network, what he is known and revered for.
David Fincher’s work is distinguished both by the themes it addresses – the filmmaker loves delving into the psyches of characters who are, to say the least, dubious (from Playing with Death to Appearances) – and by the almost Hitchcockian precision with which he films his characters (We think in particular of Zodiac, The Vault or even Millennium: the men who didn’t like women).
For this reason, “The Killer,” with three Oscar nominations, seems to be a perfect work for the filmmaker. The French comic “The Killer” signed by Matz and Luc Jacamon is the chronicle of an anonymous killer, played here by Michael Fassbender. The 15 albums are filled with reflections and long inner monologues that describe the job of the highest bidder as a contract killer, but also with philosophical reflections on life and death.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY NETFLIX
The murderer is therefore a lonely, methodical (not to say insane) and cold man who banishes any form of empathy (we will hear this often). But during a contract in Paris he missed his goal. His client therefore wants his skin and in return kills everyone who seeks trouble with him. Yes, the plot is poor, the comic is more thoughtful than a self-indulgent John Wick-style action-fest. The assassin then moves from town to town, the songs of British group The Smiths ringing in his ears (and therefore ours) as he kills.
Divided into chapters, The Killer moves from one anonymous character to the next, each defined by their function – “the tyrant” (Sala Baker), “the lawyer” (Charles Parnell), “the client” (Arliss Howard) and ” the expert” (Tilda Swinton). By nature, this universe can only be incorporeal, even inhuman, but what appears in drawing and print translates poorly, despite the talent of screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker (Legend of the Headless Horseman), the technical mastery of David Fincher, and the cinema transferred expertise from Michael Fassbender.
The viewer finds it difficult to find his way around this disjointed sequence of chapters, the murderer’s oft-repeated monologues lose their interest at the end and 118 minutes later you still don’t know why we were invited to this corpse orgy. Damage.
“The Killer” hits theaters on October 27th before being released on Netflix on November 10th.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5