Movie Review: In David Fincher’s ‘The Killer,’ an Assassin Hides in Plain Sight 

This image released by Netflix shows Michael Fassbender as an assassin in a scene from "The Killer." (Netflix via AP)
This image released by Netflix shows Michael Fassbender as an assassin in a scene from "The Killer." (Netflix via AP)
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Movie Review: In David Fincher’s ‘The Killer,’ an Assassin Hides in Plain Sight 

This image released by Netflix shows Michael Fassbender as an assassin in a scene from "The Killer." (Netflix via AP)
This image released by Netflix shows Michael Fassbender as an assassin in a scene from "The Killer." (Netflix via AP)

It’s a noir staple to open with a bit of narration, but once the nameless hit-man protagonist of David Fincher’s “The Killer” starts gabbing, he doesn’t stop.

As Fincher’s assassin (Michael Fassbender) awaits his target from a high, unfinished floor in a Paris building that looks out on the home of his mark, his inner monologue runs with a smooth, affectless monotone. His musings are a mix of professional tips (“Anticipate, don’t improvise”), nihilistic existential observations (“Most people refuse to believe that the great beyond is anything more than a cold, infinite void”) and sincere self-reflections (“I’m not exceptional, I’m just apart”).

That last line is the most telling one. “The Killer” is a terse, minimalist thriller in the cool, cold-hearted tradition of Jean Pierre Melville’s “Le Samouraï.” But while its methodical and solitary assassin acts and moves like cunning killers we’ve seen before, he blends into a modern background. He doesn’t wear a trench coat or fedora; he dresses like a German tourist, with a dopey bucket hat. He shops for tools on Amazon. He picks up supplies at Home Depot. His position in Paris is an unused WeWork space.

In “The Killer,” an agent of death is hiding in plain sight. He’s an assassin for our homogeneous, corporate world operating in the same spaces we all do. He eats McDonalds. He drives a white Avis rental van that’s the exact same as a dozen others in the rental car parking lot. Sameness is his superpower.

That also means that his nihilism is ours, too. “The Killer,” which begins streaming Friday on Netflix, is a thriller where pointlessness isn’t just lurking in the shadows. It’s everywhere, even in a movie plot that grows increasingly resistant to offering the usual genre satisfactions. Fassbender’s hitman, a background actor supreme, is a lethal manifestation of our soulless environment.

In that opening scene, he boasts of having a batting average (1.000, he brags) “better than Ted Williams.” Yet the job goes badly. In the ensuing turmoil, he races to erase his footsteps but not before a dissatisfied client has his girlfriend (Sophie Charlotte) nearly beaten to death at their clandestine Dominican Republic home.

He embarks on a location-hopping mission to eliminate those responsible, an odd twist for an assassin who, at length, preaches disaffection. Much doesn’t quite fit in “The Killer.” That he even has a live-in girlfriend — we barely see her and his thoughts never again turn back to her — seems unlikely. A revenge plot also doesn’t quite suit such a dispassionate protagonist. “Forbid empathy,” he says. And the movie, too, can be withholding of anything like emotion. The most distinct thing about Fassbender’s killer is that, like Patrick Bateman bopped to Huey Lewis and the News, he listens exclusively to the Smiths.

There’s much pleasure to be found in the unnamed hit man’s proficiency, just as there is in Fincher’s cool finesse. Here, the director — long known for his own meticulous rigor — is working with some regular collaborators, among them screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker (“Se7en”), composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (“The Social Network”) and cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt (“Mank”). And there’s a kinetic thrill to seeing Fincher back in B-movie territory. (The script is based on a French graphic novel by Alexis “Matz” Nolent.)

Especially good is a nighttime sequence set in Florida that begins and ends with a bloodthirsty dog and in between features violent hand-to-hand combat that careens through glass and walls. The scene, like several others in “The Killer,” is a filmmaking feat of control. Fassbender, a natural at playing a loner (see “Shame”), is captivating throughout because he so possesses the movie’s chief traits of guile and a deadpan sense of humor.

Everything here is tantalizingly close to calculated perfection that it comes almost as a surprise how “The Killer” ends up missing its mark. You could call it a feature of the film’s existentialism, but “The Killer” increasingly is working, albeit proficiently, in a vacuum. Our hitman travels from place to place — always with fake passports with the names of TV characters like Felix Unger, Lou Grant or Sam Malone — but we don’t get anywhere deeper with him or anything else. Meaningless may be the point in “The Killer,” but at a certain point in this stylishly composed but empty vessel, you feel like pleading as another Fincher protagonist once did: What’s in the box?



Syrian Migrant Drama Opens Berlin Film Festival

 German film director Tom Tykwer (C) pose with German actress Nicolette Krebitz (L) and German actor Lars Eidinger during a photo call for the film “Das Licht“ (The light) in the "Berlinale special" section of the 75th Berlinale, Europe's first major film festival of the year, in Berlin on February 13, 2025. (AFP)
German film director Tom Tykwer (C) pose with German actress Nicolette Krebitz (L) and German actor Lars Eidinger during a photo call for the film “Das Licht“ (The light) in the "Berlinale special" section of the 75th Berlinale, Europe's first major film festival of the year, in Berlin on February 13, 2025. (AFP)
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Syrian Migrant Drama Opens Berlin Film Festival

 German film director Tom Tykwer (C) pose with German actress Nicolette Krebitz (L) and German actor Lars Eidinger during a photo call for the film “Das Licht“ (The light) in the "Berlinale special" section of the 75th Berlinale, Europe's first major film festival of the year, in Berlin on February 13, 2025. (AFP)
German film director Tom Tykwer (C) pose with German actress Nicolette Krebitz (L) and German actor Lars Eidinger during a photo call for the film “Das Licht“ (The light) in the "Berlinale special" section of the 75th Berlinale, Europe's first major film festival of the year, in Berlin on February 13, 2025. (AFP)

German director Tom Tykwer said Thursday that his latest movie about a Syrian immigrant aimed to encourage people to stop "isolating" themselves, as it opened Berlin's international film festival.

"The Light", screening out of competition at the Berlinale, tells the story of a middle-class Berlin family whose lives are upended when they hire a new domestic worker from Syria.

The movie marks a return to feature filmmaking after a long hiatus for Tykwer, 59, who has been focusing on the acclaimed German television series "Babylon Berlin".

In "The Light", the Engels family -- Tim, Milena and their teenage twins -- are all immersed in their separate worlds as they navigate the complexities of modern life.

But when the enigmatic Farrah, recently arrived from Syria, is placed in their home as the new housekeeper, they find themselves slowly starting to reconnect.

"Everyone is in their own aquarium with their head stuck in it," Tykwer said.

"They are stuck with their heads under water and then some energy comes from the outside and pulls them out and enables them look at each other again."

'Extra urgency'

Tykwer said the film aimed to show that better communication can help people to relate personally but also "politically".

"We have to approach each other again and stop isolating ourselves so much," he said.

The Berlinale, which ranks with Cannes and Venice among Europe's top festivals, serves as a key launchpad for films from around the world.

US writer and director Todd Haynes will head up the jury at this year's edition, with 19 pictures vying for the festival's Golden Bear top prize.

Haynes said Thursday that the world was in a "state of particular crisis" and that filmmakers had witnessed the return of US President Donald Trump "with tremendous concern, shock".

Haynes said he hoped the Berlinale, which has a reputation as the most political of the big international film festivals, would serve as a forum for digesting global events.

"This festival has always had a strength of conviction and an openness to a challenging and political discourse and bringing that into the filmmaking, and what's happening in the world right now has put an extra urgency to all of that," he told reporters.

This year's Berlinale winds up on February 23, the same day as a snap election in Germany, called after the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's governing coalition late last year.

The campaign ahead of the election has been bitterly divisive, with the far-right AfD surging in the polls.

'Resistance'

Last year, Berlinale organizers made headlines by barring five previously invited AfD politicians and telling them they were "not welcome".

Berlinale director Tricia Tuttle said cinema could be an act of "resistance... to all of the perverse ideas that many far-right parties across the whole world and across Europe are spreading".

"This is a space where we want to come together and listen to each other and communicate through cinema... I think the very fact we're all here is a resistance," she said.

Films in competition at the Berlinale include "Dreams", from Mexican director Michel Franco, about a Mexican ballet dancer, and "What Does that Nature Say to You", from South Korean arthouse favorite Hong Sang-soo.

Hollywood director Richard Linklater will present "Blue Moon", starring Ethan Hawke, 11 years after Linklater won Berlin's Silver Bear for Best Director for "Boyhood".

Romanian director Radu Jude, who won the Golden Bear in 2021, is in the running with "Kontinental '25", a dark comedy about the rise of nationalism.

And France's Lucile Hadzihalilovic will present "The Ice Tower", a fantasy drama starring Marion Cotillard.

South Korean director Bong Joon-ho will present out of competition his new film "Mickey 17" with Robert Pattinson, and British actor Tilda Swinton will receive a lifetime achievement award.