‘HE’S A KILLER’

VOICEOVER DESCRIBES PORTRAIT OF A KILLER

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

The voiceover describes the meticulous attention to detail usually attributed to success, but the portrait is left incomplete, resulting in a cat and mouse chase down the streets of Paris.

Michael Fassbender plays a usually perfect assassin who misses his target and then becomes the hunted in the Netflix Original, The Killer (2023.

The way he eludes capture by deconstructing his mission on the way to the airport impresses.

Director David Fincher adds to the intrigue with a cacophony of background sound, a whining score and the very singular voiceover.

The Fincher Fassbender collaboration is an interesting one. Fincher has become known in Hollywood as a filmmaker of suspenseful action psychodramas, while Fassbender can quite often become suspense personified with an introverted all telling screen persona.

Fincher also directed Daniel Craig in The Girl in the Dragon Tattoo (2011) Jodie Foster in the Panic Room (2002) and Brad Pit in the Fight Club (1999) and Seven (1995).

Fassbender plays characters with calm exteriors that are boiling up inside with emotions while keeping the viewer guessing if and when that edginess will surface. This formula flourished in Prometheus (2012) starring Noomi Rapace, and in Macbeth (2015) as Macbeth costarring Marion Cotillard as Lady Macbeth, and in Steve Jobs (2015) as Steve Jobs.

In The Killer, Fassbender must get off the European continent undetected while also leaving no trace for a global manhunt that might ensue.

Fincher shows with varying degrees of detail the little bits and pieces of the escape plan well planned out as if the protagonist has used story boards before.

The perfectionists makes another mistake, though, by taking a layover on the way back to his hideout in the Dominican Republic. What he finds turns the plot upside down and inside out with the assassin having been the hunted now once more becoming the hunter.

The narrative has just gotten started.

Fassbender begins to wear his emotions on his shirt sleeve and thereby brings the deconstruction of his character to a slow grinding halt. But he must internalize again and start constructing the crime scene to catch those he hunts.

Fincher tries again for perfection by focusing on the details of the chase with his protagonist this time doing the chasing.

The camera follows the details of the killer assembling the necessary guns, other equipment and supplies from various locations.

Fincher ramps up the cacophony of background sounds, the whining score and the voiceover as the narrative leads to a storyboard of intensely choreographed fight scenes inside a dark unfamiliar house along the California coast.

This rising tension merges with the inner doubt about whether or not the killer can succeed after making two mistakes following an opening scene sequence filled with hubris and all the necessary details.

The camera gradually draws everyone into the tone and atmosphere of the narrative until the ultimate concluding scene sequences that leaves everyone guessing up until the rolling credits.