The Killer Pushes a Dead Body Up a Mountain
“When was my last nice, quiet drowning?” is a weary line, and a bizarre one. But it’s apropos, coming from such a weary and bizarre protagonist. The main character of David Fincher’s The Killer—played by Michael Fassbender and given no name (or rather far too many to trust any), only a role—is a loner who envisions himself as one of the few. The few, that is, that have the power and the will to enact it in ways that exploit the many. The many that don’t even grasp the extent of such exploitation, who are taken for mere pawns in a much larger game. The many, that is to say: us.
He may be one of the privileged few, but Fassbender’s hit man is stuck in the doldrums. His narration and Fincher’s direction make clear from the start that this is not a sleek, lavish lifestyle, but rather one of routine. It’d even be monastic if it weren’t about the destruction of life.
When we first meet the killer, he’s watching out a window in an abandoned WeWork space in Paris. He naps, he does yoga, he checks his heart rate, he looks out the window. He eats, he spies on pedestrians in the street, he checks his heart rate, he looks out the window. As quiet as his movements are, his inner monologue is inexhaustible, narrating his credo (“Anticipate, don’t improvise. Show no empathy.”) and chastising the many for their gullible natures.
But the narration is simply the setup for the joke; the punchline is how far afield his actions fall. Immediately after stating how impeccable he is, he misses a target, which puts him on the run from the very employers who hired him. After someone close to him is attacked in his place, he sets off to get revenge on all involved.
It’s a premise as commonplace as the assassin’s routine, and Fincher knows it. The Killer’s very (dark) heart rests in the dichotomy between the hit man’s inner thoughts and the impotence of his actions, as well as between our expectations of a hit man movie and what Fincher delivers. This is Le Samouraï by way of Kafka.
In Fincher’s imagination, the assassin’s life eschews glitzy hotels and tailored suits. Instead, it consists of a revolving door of rental cars. It entails dressing “like a German tourist” (which means a lot of bucket hats). The killer’s eating habits may just be his most dangerous—packaged hard-boiled eggs, McDonald’s breakfasts.
Fassbender plays it all with a honed physicality, such that few of his actions or words feel like there’s any life behind him. Even such a violent role has become little else beyond drudgery. As he himself says, it’s physically exhausting to do nothing. The killer is workmanlike to a Sisyphean degree. Unlike Alain Delon’s near mystic assassin, Fassbender’s killer exhibits no hint of honor; nor does he hold to an actual code, like many of Michael Mann’s violent men. No honor, no code, only routine. Only habit. There’s no great dream at stake, no existential struggle. Simply repetitive action. In the end, that’s the biggest joke: he’s merely another pawn in the game. He’s not one of the few, he’s as nameless and exploited by capitalist greed as the rest of us.
If you expect a charismatic hero and a labyrinthine plot, you’ll find yourself underwhelmed by Fincher’s latest. But if you can get on its ironic wavelength, it’s a fun subversion. Beyond WeWork and McDonald’s, there are myriad sideswipes at everything from Storage Wars to Postmates. Not every hit lands, but they’re effective on the whole. Fincher’s collaborators of Reznor and Ross create yet another strong score. At times it sounds like film is gurgling gravel—and that’s about as much as this violent man is accomplishing.
The slickest move Fincher employs is to adapt his protagonist’s methods to the target as he moves through his rampage. Attacking another contract killer in Florida requires red meat and a Molotov cocktail. Later, when the target is a tech CEO, Fincher adds visual effects for smartphone imagery while the assassin leverages Amazon lockers and other amenities of modern consumerism. The best surprise, however, is Tilda Swinton’s short appearance, and one of the few conversations in the movie. She gives a masterclass, reeling from the realization of her inevitable fate while maintaining her incisive wit. The scene shatters the twisted interiority of the rest of the film, approaching something like an epiphany.
It’s not enough for Fassbender’s killer, however. He’ll keep to his routine, keep to his targets, and keep to his joyless life. For all the drudgery, though, The Killer is far from a joyless film.
