Following a brief and frankly uneventful theatrical release a few weeks ago, the latest feature from acclaimed filmmaker David Fincher arrives at what was always intended to be its true home on Netflix. Based on a French graphic novel series from 1998 that the director had been circling for adaptation at least as far back as 2007, The Killer is a slick and stylish hitman thriller that feels so obviously in Fincher’s wheelhouse – too much so, to be honest – that he probably should have just let it go.

That’s not to say that The Killer is a bad movie. It’s perfectly fine – well made, efficiently staged, reasonably suspenseful. At the same time, it’s also a very simple genre exercise from a filmmaker who has proven that he’s capable of more ambitious projects. Had it been released back when Fincher was struggling for mainstream success with movies like The Game or Panic Room, this one probably would’ve made some fairly decent money and been seen as a positive step in his career advancement. Today, however, it feels like… well, like a regression back to movies like The Game and Panic Room.

Title:	The Killer
Year of Release:	2023
Director:	David Fincher
Watched On:	Netflix

Despite lifting the same title, Fincher’s The Killer is not a remake and has no direct connection to John Woo’s famous hitman action extravaganza from 1989, other than the fact that both share a lot of common inspiration from John-Pierre Melville’s 1967 Le samouraï (as do a number of other films, including Walter Hill’s The Driver, Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, Johnnie To’s Vengeance, and Anton Corbijn’s The American, to name a few).

In this version, Michael Fassbender stars as an unnamed contract killer on assignment to take out a target in Paris. As he explains via a long-winded internal voiceover narration, being an assassin is methodical, often tedious work. It requires careful planning and seemingly endless amounts of waiting around before anything actually happens. If all goes properly, the event itself should proceed quickly and cleanly, upon which the Killer will extract himself before anyone else realizes he was ever there.

Unfortunately, in a very rare turn of events, the job in Paris does not go cleanly. Freak circumstances interfere and cause the Killer to miss his target. Although he’s able to escape the scene, blowback for this failure will result in someone he cares about being harmed. That in turn will lead the Killer to seek vengeance by working systematically through the chain of everyone responsible, from the crooked attorney (Charles Parnell) who arranges his jobs, to another high-end assassin known only as “The Expert” (Tilda Swinton), all the way to the original client (Arliss Howard) – at each step of the way tying up as many loose ends as he can.

That’s about all there is to the movie. The story is a pretty simple and predictable revenge tale with very little meat on its bones. It looks great, it moves quickly, it has some strong set-pieces, and Fassbender delivers a pretty good performance. The movie is entertaining enough on the whole. I suppose it could even charitably be described as a back-to-basics genre deconstruction. All the same, I feel like David Fincher could have directed this in his sleep, and honestly I’m not entirely convinced that he didn’t.

Lest I sound too negative, let me be clear that I like The Game. I like Panic Room too. I didn’t dislike The Killer, necessarily. However, coming at this stage of his career, something about the film feels very lightweight, like Fincher needed something to keep himself occupied while waiting for some other project to come together, and this one he’d been sitting on for a while was the easiest thing to throw together without exerting too much effort. Even for a fan of the director, it just doesn’t seem like an essential piece of his filmography.

Video Streaming

Netflix streams The Killer in 4K HDR at an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. (No, sticklers, this one does not measure either 2.39:1 or 2.40:1.) Like most David Fincher movies, the photography is sleek and stylized, but also rather cold and clinical. Colors are clean and precisely rendered, if generally muted. The image is quite sharp and has nice contrast. The HDR grading brings out some nice highlights in the nighttime streets of Paris and a neon-lit casino in Florida.

Despite lacking Atmos, the Dolby 5.1 soundtrack is very immersive, with many creative uses of directional effects. The audio is crisp and clear. The (largely ambient) musical score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross has nice fidelity and dynamic range. The movie opens with throbbing bass over the credits and has a number of moments throughout that deliver solid low-end impact, though nothing too earth-shaking. While this may be a thriller, it’s not a full-blown action movie.