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The Killer Review
Image Credit: Netflix
Loading...I probably need to watch more David Fincher.
I was not–to say the least–a fan of Fight Club when I saw it way back in 1999 or 2000. I think I probably missed the point of it back then, but the people I knew who liked it by and large liked it because they thought it was “cool” and “awesome”. Not because the movie was allegedly a takedown of the people who would watch it and feel that way themselves. Regardless, I still thought that movie was predictable and obnoxious when I was 19 years old. Keep it in your mouth: it’s a movie I’ve long meant to rewatch and see if I’ve changed my mind on. I just… remember how much I disliked it then, and I keep punting it down the list so I might not have to sit through that again. If I end up digging it now, then it will just be worth the wait.
But even if I were to watch Fight Club right now–even if I were to still hate it–I’d say that’s more on Chuck Palahniuk than Fincher. So I should stop holding it against the director. Since my college aged watch of Fight Club, I’ve also seen The Social Network and Gone Girl, both of which I liked a great deal, but probably did not LOVE. So I know Fincher is talented and makes better movies than what I had previously thought.
(And for transparency’s sake, I also saw parts of Se7en when I was a kid, but I don’t recall much besides the ending. I haven’t ever got around to sitting through all of it because I worry knowing the ending might ruin the rest of it)
(And oh yeah, I saw Alien 3 when I was much younger, so… that counts for whatever it counts for)
The point is that when I heard “new David Fincher movie”, I probably did not have the same reaction as a lot of his fans. It just kind of came and went right through my ears.
But time passed, and I started hearing mostly good things about Netflix’s The Killer, starring Michael Fassbender. So it occurred to me I ought to give it a shot.
What did I think? Well…
TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS
+ I can’t stress enough how much I recommend watching movies with at least decent quality headphones. The ones I have were quite inexpensive, but they are such a boon to watching good movies. Like this one, for instance!
The sound editing and sound mixing in The Killer are phenomenal. We really get some perspective sound, which I don’t see often enough. In the first act in particular, Fassbender’s character uses earbuds. Sometimes with one bud in, sometimes both. And when the camera point of view switches to his own perspective, we get the sound of the music he is listening to get louder. And with headphones on, you hear the music through whichever bud is in. And when the POV is looking at Fassbender instead of through him, the music gets muted and sounds like… well, how it would sound if someone had earbuds in close to you.
A small detail most won’t notice, but I did, and I appreciated it. I really love great attention to detail like that.
+ Michael Fassbender is his usual terrific self, and he is one of our best living actors. He is so calm yet menacing here. Everything about him has this air of malice to it, but at the same time, his inner monologue is so subdued. He seems collected and at peace and put together, but Fassbender makes sure his words–both external and internal–have a weight of pressure and intensity to them.
The easiest way to put it is that he is so potent here. It’s hard to imagine anyone else playing this character as well as he does. But that’s something you can say about any of his roles.
– Throughout the movie, Fassbender travels around the globe using a set of secret identities, and it quickly becomes obvious these IDs are all famous television show characters. It’s a cute little Easter Egg gimmick–there were a few I looked up because I wasn’t as familiar with the names as others–but given the character’s meticulous nature, it seemed a bit cheesy and not well thought out.
At some point, some other person–a ticket taker or a cashier–is going to say “Oh, Sam Malone! Like the guy from Cheers!”, and then Fassbender goes from incognito to highly conspicuous in someone’s mind. And this is after he talks in his early internal monologue about the need to not be memorable at all.
Look, it’s not much, but it was something that strained believability to me and made me think “Why is THIS MOVIE ripping off Cable Guy?”.
– As well made and impressive as this flick is, it’s ultimately yet another John Wick clone, almost the only kind of action movie we get nowadays. They are all about the Anti John McClane: morally nebulous protagonists who are experts at everything. They have some ghost of their profession enter their lives, giving them cause for a revenge mission, and then they go kill the hell out of everyone who gets in their way.
I’m not saying I hate the formula myself, but for all the talk of Superhero Movie Fatigue, where is the talk of John Wick Clones Fatigue? Though The Killer is, granted, more of a thriller than an action flick. Look, you use the Downs the movie gives you when it’s really good.
