The Killer - film review with Michael Fassbender

I seem like I talk here every week about how movies respond to late capitalism, but — and here we are — we inevitably come back to that in the new thriller David Fincher. the killer It would just be a traditional killer-for-hire thriller if it wasn’t prepared to actually deal with the instability of the job.

Michael Fassbender He plays the role of the killer, and in the role of narrator of his story, he communicates off-screen with the viewer much more frequently than he does with the other characters in the film. We soon realize that the killer’s text – in which he presents to us the philosophy and values behind his methodical routine – is not so much about convincing us as it is about convincing himself. in the killerPerfectionism is not a context-free aberration, but rather a symptom of the neoliberal excitement of productivity.

It is important here to emphasize that the film addresses social, cultural and economic issues to dispel the initial impression of this the killer It’s just a formal exercise, in this film that Fincher is making with the support of Netflix With a taste for hobby. The director imitates Jean-Pierre Melville that it Samurai (1967) From the protagonist’s costume to the poster art, Melville was a master of the would-be crime thriller. Proving this kinship is part of the process of concealing discourse the killer.

The process doesn’t involve much risk creatively, because Fincher is taking advantage of Netflix’s support to flex his old muscles; Specifically, those Fight club (1999), where Edward Norton He’s also proven to be an unreliable narrator in his fallacies about consumerism, self-help and all that out there. fact the killer Fincher reunites with screenwriter Seven (1995), Andrew Kevin Walkernearly 30 years later, seems to correspond to this 1990s rescue, at most the killer It also revisits the misogynistic approach that characterizes the director’s thrillers.

The question then is to know how the killer Its countercultural commentary is updated for the 2020s, and whether this elevates the film beyond its evidence of craftsmanship. On the one hand, there’s clearly an action game going on, the challenge of creating an exciting story with little dialogue and an almost musical beat, supported by the omnipresent soundtrack. Trent Reznor that it Atticus Ross. On the other hand, ironically, the conveniences of late capitalism make the hitman’s revenge quest downright tedious, from purchasing a card duplicator on Amazon to convenient entry into a high-end gym thanks to a free one-week pass.

This friction between challenge and boredom is where the film derives its rhetorical power, or at least its main internal conflict. The tedium of the meticulous formal process is also a staple of his thrillers Steven Soderbergh Over the past 15 years, Fincher has never been as close to his American contemporary as he is now the killer. The entire scene in which Fassbender drives through Florida in the film is reminiscent of In full proof (2011) by Soderbergh: a madness of attack and destruction, whose effect is enhanced by its gratuitousness, and the action as something purely mechanical.

in the killer, through boredom is completed by the realization that accompanies the viewer from the moment Fassbender presses the WeWork door handle: being the narrator of his own story does not make him less of a service provider in a grand scheme of impersonality, a pawn of ownership. The trade is outsourced, with the added benefit of being unhealthy in the world of assassins (or pajamas in general, anyway). That’s clearly the whole point of the film, as the voice-over narration plays out in the final minutes, but it’s interesting to follow how Fincher and Walker try to create a story built on the premise that everything is given to the hero — inside access to a credit card, roughly — and nothing Really gets in the way.

This pessimism regarding our prospects and all the indifference with which the film treats the character’s relationship with the world makes… the killer Another elaboration by Fincher on the subject of satire. At the beginning of his novel, Fassbender comes forward and defends himself, saying that people confuse skepticism with cynicism, but it is worth remembering that the protagonist’s point of view is not the most reliable. The truth is the killer It becomes more cynical as time goes on, and in the end, when sunlight hits the character’s face and supposedly saves him, perhaps dawn is actually just another glimpse of the end of the world, as in the explosion at the end of the world. Fight club.