David Fincher's 'The Killer': An Existential Masterpiece in the Shadows of Noir

The Killer - David Fincher - 2023

David Fincher is my favorite filmmaker. Every time he makes a movie, it is a gift. This one, especially so. Earlier this year, I said that Oppenheimer was the best movie to come out in my lifetime. Well, it might be the best film of the year, but I'm pretty sure The Killer is my favorite. By the way, this surpasses 2007 as the best film year I've been cognizant of, and these two pictures give me a No Country for Old Men vs. There Will Be Blood vibe. Yeah, that movie that won all the awards was dope, but the other was the best movie of the decade. I'm going on record; it's the kind of film that gets the Academy's attention, doesn't win shit, then years later, everyone collectively realizes it's a classic. We shall see come awards season. 

Based on the French graphic novel series The Killer written by Alexis "Matz" Nolent and illustrated by Luc Jacamon. Stars Michael Fassbender as the hitman, also Arliss Howard (who I love), Charles Parnell, Kerry O'Malley, Sala Baker, Sophie Charlotte, and Tilda Swinton. This is the second of four movies Fincher is making for Netflix. The first was Mank, released in 2020. 

The gist: a hitman finds himself in some shit after botching a hit. He's now playing cat and mouse with his former bosses (and himself), who nearly killed his girlfriend trying to get to him. So "nothing like this can ever happen again," he goes on the offensive, globe-trotting, ducking in and out of shadows, insisting that what he's doing isn't personal. Yeah, sure. 

It's this guy's version of self-help. You know, throw yourself in your work, meditate, do some yoga, tell yourself lies, take up existential philosophy, quote some Aleister Crowley (I named a rooster Aleister Crowley, no shit), listen to the Smiths, shoot a guy in the face. Just like mine, except with extreme violence. (I have said verbatim several things this guy says through the course of this film, but never really considered myself a psycho).

The world portrayed is in no way glamorous. This world is cold. The film opens with him prepping for a kill, which is all just mundane shit, part of his day. People that come for you have no names or faces. You don't know who they are, and they don't know you. But that bullet still has your name on it. People don't understand why he is there when he shows up to do his deeds. 

This isn't just run-of-the-mill action. The one choreographed fight scene is fucking brutal, all out, and devastating. As Fassbender walks away, he repeats one of his mantras, "This is what it takes." He's saying this to us, the audience. Fuck.

First watch, I thought it was a masterpiece, but it was a mid-tier Fincher. Now, I have it fourth and rising. Zodiac, Se7en, and Social Network ahead of it. But just barely. Surpasses Gone Girl and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, another of his misunderstood home runs. 

Made me think of Paul Schrader whose work also depicts troubled men struggling through an existential crisis leading to a violent, cathartic event. If you don't know who he is, he's the guy who wrote Taxi Driver and Raging Bull and directed the films  Cat People, Affliction, Auto Focus, The Canyons (the insane Bret Easton Ellis written film staring Lindsay Lohan and porn actor/rapist James Deen who was called "Bill Cosby of porn"), and most recently The Constant Gardner. He got into some shit after the 2016 election for calling the upcoming Trump presidency "a call to violence" and that "we should be willing to take arms. Like Old John Brown." Such earned him a visit from the NYC Counterterrorism Bureau. So that's pretty cool. 

Looked to see if he had anything to say about it. He did. "Is style its own validation in narrative art? Or should it serve another purpose as well? Fincher's film is a masterclass in film style, but there is a pharase (sic) for this in Texas. It's called 'all hat.'" He also called Fassbender's character "the Chatty-Kathy of hit men."

Fincher himself called it a "B-movie." A dressed-up, near-silent assassin film that's sharp, pulpy, and doesn't pretend. Style, cynical worldviews, pessimism, these are things Fincher films ooze. The images of the various nocturnal cities suggest a Dostoevsky nightmare, fragments of artistic tradition to stave off spiritual despair, laden with new-wave references to other movies and directors. nostalgia is very much in Fincher's mind. Fincher gives us many allusions (most notably Le Samourai by Jean-Pierre Melville). Throughout, unorthodox narration (very much a noir trope) demonstrates the ambiguity of human motives. Commodity culture is a wasteland (product placement is everywhere, making his job both easier to perform and harder to get away with). The film is a critical and self-reflexive analysis of contemporary life, a dream image of bygone glamour repressing as much history as it recalls and service of the cinephile and commodification.

Asked several people what they thought this movie was about and got completely different answers, which were also different from mine. That's what makes Fincher a genius. It's different based on where you are and what you're dealing with. For me, it was obviously about the fallacy of control and the lies we tell ourselves. Also, a meditation on what it takes to be great. Also, why give a shit enough for those sacrifices. This is where the existentialist fires up.

"Fate is a placebo," he says at the end. "The only life path is the one behind you." Then he flenches when he says he is one of the many, just like us, the audience. That shit isn't going to last. This whole time, the killer is a political pessimist experiencing existential anguish, erasing his old life and taking up this new one that is the antithesis of everything he says and does. However, he is the ultimate unreliable narrator. At the end, you see a man expressing a passion for the past and present but also a fear of the future. Dreads looking ahead instead tries to survive by the day and, when unsuccessful, retreats into the past, i.e., its erasure. He is one with a lack of clear priorities, experiencing his first taste of insecurity. So he concentrates on violence, perversion, and decay, what he knows. His cauldron of inarticulate rage we get through his noir-like offscreen narration that's highly poetic and ironic, reinforced by his protection and love that we don't see and is likely bullshit. This love, who is stuck with at the movie's end, has destroyed his real identity. Ideologically, deep down, he is a contradiction, and all his talk incoherent. 

Yes, if you can't tell, I love existential art and film noir. A character withdrawing into despair and bitter disengagement that's my jam. Couple that with an atmosphere of determinism and irony, irredeemable evil, exposing the underside of American character, then I am rock hard. "I. Don't. Give. A. Fuck."