Rating: C-
Dir: David Fincher
Star: Michael Fassbender, Tilda Swinton, Charles Parnell, Arliss Howard
If you want to spend two hours listening to someone repeating their internal monologue in a monotone, occasionally interrupted by Morrissey whining about something or other, this is the movie for you. OK, that’s a little bit of an exaggeration. But this feels like among the blandest entries in Fincher’s filmography, without much to say about… anything. When the biggest takeaway is confirmation in my dislike of The Smiths, it doesn’t feel like 119 minutes well-spent. The central character is a patient, unnamed assassin (Fassbender), whose perfect track record is spoiled when he botches a hit in a Parisian hotel. Returning home, he finds her girlfriend savagely beaten, in apparent payback for his failure.
He does not take well to this, and sets out on a strangely low-key mission of revenge. This begins with his “manager” (Parnell), whose office provides information on the two other killers responsible, a sophisticated woman (Swinton) and a man who lives up to his nickname of The Brute (Sala Baker). He then moves on up, to the Chicago businessman (Howard) who ordered the original assassination. However, it feels like everyone here is more interested in the process than the outcome. For instance, we get to see a great deal of the preparation for his attack on The Brute. But the event itself? It largely unfolds in near-darkness, where it’s impossible to see what’s going on, and at such length of obscured action, you begin to wonder if Fincher is pulling an elaborate prank.
This is possible, because The Killer might not be the legend he appears to be in his own mind. He screws up far too often, to the point where you wonder how he has never been caught. Perhaps it’s due to the complete absence here of the authorities. Though he often repeats his own inane rules, such as “Empathy is weakness”, these are commandments to which he frequently only pays lip service. He’s certainly not John Wick, and indeed, this might be the antithesis of it. I can respect Fincher’s decision to go in the opposite direction to almost every other film about a hitman over the past twenty years. I do not, however, have to like it. And I don’t.
Indeed, I’d rather have spent two hours in the company of Swinton’s assassin. It seems she would be more entertaining company, since unlike The Killer, she doesn’t appear entirely defined by her work. Her reaction on realizing death is sitting opposite her, is to order a flight of whisky, and regret not eating more Haagen-Daaz. That tells us more about her in two minutes, than we ever learn about The Killer. Again: maybe it’s all some kind of Situationist jape, with Fincher deliberately devoting an entire film, to the least interesting character in it. If so, then the joke is very much on us, the audience, and I’m not laughing very much. Indeed, I might go as far as to say, heaven knows I’m miserable now.
[Jim McLennan]
The moral of the story, if indeed there is one, is to always make sure that you get enough quality sleep. And I’d suggest that you do just that, before watching this dry and tedious bilge.
Fassbender plays an unnamed assassin, and the whole thing is based on the French graphic novel series The Killer written by Alexis “Matz” Nolent and illustrated by Luc Jacamon. It is presented in six distinct chapters, a conceit/construct that I actually quite liked, and one that crisply suited the film.
Mr X (or Mr F) instantly alienated himself with this member of the audience by ably demonstrating considerable yoga fitness and his supple strength and flexibility – whereas I groan just bending down to pick up the TV remote whilst seated.
The film has a slow, measured, wilfully lethargic and low-key start, combined with a long monologue that resurfaces routinely. It’s very well shot, with a keen eye for colour and texture and contrast. It’s clean, crisp, calm, clever and colin (sorry I ran out of c-words), making good use of the locations as vistas, presenting them to be seen, sampled, tasted and enjoyed. It borders on being a travelogue. Which is perhaps just as well.
“I find music a useful distraction, a focus tool… keeps the inner voice from wondering…” The bad news (from my viewpoint) is that they have chosen Morrissey for their soundtrack. Now, I don’t mind a bit of the grimly tedious odd bugger for the occasional moan-along, but they’ve seemingly chosen the drone’iest dirges that they could from his catalogue. And it soon grates.
Anyway. Back to the film right? Well, I wrote two full sides of A4 and really can’t be arsed to type them up. So here’s the ‘highlights’ verbatim(ish) picked from my scrawl…
And this smug, self-satisfied ‘ultimate professional’ hitman has just fucked up. Bigly. And having messed-up he heads home, paranoia intact, to find that Mrs X has been assaulted in lieu of him, because that’s just what any ‘ultimate professional’ hitman, sent to kill him, would surely do…… yeah.
37 minutes: No idea what this film is actually about but, as expected, Mr X goes looking for the man and woman who left in a manner easy to trail. Because, well, that’s what any ‘ultimate professional’ hit-person would do. Yeah. Right.
“Lovely humid New Orleans. A thousand restaurants, one menu.”
1 hour: Erm. We’re not much further along, and there’s yet more fucking Morrissey to endure, and goodness knows I’m miserable now. This is getting tiresome. It’s ‘The Equaliser’ only missing pacing, made monotonous, lifeless (ho-ho!) and uninvolving, with no spring in its step or charm. Still at 1:17 the implausible fight sequence has finally arrived. Great. Yes. Uh-huh. That’s lovely [checks watch]. It is quite ouchy. It’s also silly.
I’m bored. 27 Minutes to go. Nothing stands out. There is no sense of an interesting or involving story being told here.
Summary: Accept that life is a brief dream set between two infinite sleeps. The dreary Morrissey sets the tone, dreary in the dark underpass… dreary dreary misery me… …it’s boring but just about adequate. Still, don’t waste your time with it.
Rating: C-
….CUTE! Yes! That was the word I should have used! Not colin. I knew I had one… sorry Jim… I’ll try harder next time… ‘onest guvnor…
[Phil Brown]