The quiet, ruminative introduction of David Fincher’s latest presents a haggard Michael Fassbender – the eponymous killer. An assassin staking out his target, he is disillusioned and tired, and his voiceover reiterates lines familiar to this genre, bromides regarding one’s luck if they never meet this cold-blooded killer, regarding the absence of true justice in this world, regarding luck being a false construct. Fassbender looks like a genre convention through most of this sequence, too, with an outfit that looks like it was pulled from Le Samourai. The opening scene could be considered a riff on Rear Window. These allusions, whether intentional or not, come off as unimportant as they would to the “Killer” himself – they are empty gestures to spectacular fictions regarding how crime operates.

As the V.O. monologue goes on, it bleeds into something more intriguing, something Continue reading The Killer (2023) Movie Review →