I wish I had liked David Fincher’s “The Killer” more than I eventually did — all the pieces were there for Fincher to deliver another great film, but the end result, although visually assured, was a disappointing turn from a director we expect more from.
Another person who shares my lukewarm thoughts on “The Killer” is noted author and screenwriter Bret Easton Ellis who didn’t mince words on his podcast when describing his reaction to the film.
The best directed piece of nothing I’ve ever seen in my life. Like every Fincher movie, it looks phenomenal, and it is cut with a precision that takes your breath away until you’re just staring at it going “why the hell am I watching this?”
However, despite the whole amounting to nothing, Ellis goes on to highlight three scenes that did work in “The Killer”: the opening 10 minutes, Michael Fassbender’s killer confronting Tilda Swinton’s assassin and, for me, the piece de resistance, the bare-knuckled two-man brawl inside a tiny Florida home.
Fincher has called “The Killer” a “B-movie,” and he is correct in that assessment. It has no pretensions. It’s an expertly dressed-up, mostly-silent assassin drama. It’s also what you might call a “by the numbers” statement. Sharp, pulpy and not pretending to be anything other than what it purports to be. An empty exercise in style.
Although “The Killer” garnered mostly positive reviews, it also received muted approval from audiences — it has a 6.7 rating on IMDB, based on 174k votes and sits at 61% user approval on Rotten Tomatoes.
I’m not sure what the future holds for Fincher, or what his next project might — although, he is attached to a ‘Squid Game’ remake — but he did recently renew his contract with Netflix for three more years. This means he’ll continue making streaming movies instead of theatrically-minded ones until 2027. His greatest achievement remains 2007’s “Zodiac.”
Now it’s your turn. What did you think of “The Killer”?
I should warn you: based on everything I’ve heard, this teaser is a total misdirection. The movie is not at all what it’s being portrayed as here. In fact, most of the footage in the teaser comes from the first few minutes of the film.