Killer on Netflix: How much is David Fincher’s new thriller worth?

What is it about?

After a disaster is narrowly avoided, the assassin battles his employers and himself around the world on a punitive mission that’s supposed to be nothing personal.

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It’s one of Netflix’s most anticipated major-director movies of the year: The Assassin is David Fincher’s new feature. For the role of the killer in his thriller, which was a hit at the Venice Film Festival, the filmmaker called Michael Fassbender (Hunger, Shame, Twelve Years a Slave).

The German-Irish actress is not alone, as she is surrounded by Tilda Swinton, Charles Parnell (Top Gun: Maverick), Arles Howard (Full Metal Jacket), Carrie O’Malley (Why Women Kill, Snowplow), Emiliano Pernia (Pickpockets), Sala Baker (Bullet Train, The Mandalorian), Sophie Charlotte (Dark Days) and Gabriel Polanco, for whom this is his first role.

Is it worth checking out?

After three years of absence, David Fincher returns with a new feature film on Netflix, the privileged partner of the famous director who signed an exclusive contract with the platform.

The filmmaker’s twelfth film, The Killer is a long-running project for the thriller master, who for this occasion reunites with screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, who penned the script for Seven.

They filmed a series of comics together The killer With a screenplay by Frenchman Alexis Nolent (Matz) and illustrations by Luc Giacomoni, to deliver the much-anticipated adaptation of David Fincher’s fans. Did the filmmaker return to his first love?

A thriller in six chapters that plunges us into the psyche of a nihilistic killer, The Assassin is a great director’s film. In both anticipation and action—the daily yo-yo of a killer’s life—David Fincher attends to the smallest actions and gestures of his nameless (and soulless?) embodied anti-hero with surgical precision, with the requisite coldness and cynicism. Michael Fassbender fights in great form.

Controlling his heartbeat while meditating to the beat of The Smiths (whose music accompanies the film from beginning to end), this killer has his own code for contracts and repeats his mantras over and over. Time:

“Respect the plan. Trust no one. Respect the plan. Banish sympathy. Respect the plan. Anticipate. Don’t improvise. Respect the plan. Never concede the slightest advantage. Respect the plan. Only fight for what we pay you to do.“, as his inner voice tells us in the film’s teaser.

this morning routine The perfect hitman, which he plays in the first third of the film, wants to be cold, unrelenting and very robotic. This old-fashioned figure is finally taken away the moment things get out of the killer’s control. He misses his target for the first time and realizes that he is becoming a wanted man.

Except that he doesn’t understand it like that and he doesn’t have it anymore “nothing to do”. The assassin then begins a worldwide hunt to find those responsible for the contract and kill them.

The killer falls into a kind of double-edged cynical self-criticism, as the killer repeats to anyone who will listen that it’s nothing personal.

And yet, everything is personal, as he blames himself primarily for missing the contract and noticing the dysfunction at home, but also seeing his loved ones threatened, namely his wife Magdala (Sophie Charlotte). More than the liberation to be gained, it is also the path to self-discovery that the killer strives to achieve.

As he progresses through his video game-style hunt that leads him to meet a client (Arlies Howard), a lawyer (Charles Parnell), a brute (Sala Baker) or an expert (Tilda Swinton), the killer is also in pursuit. His humanity and discovers what – in his single concept of life – is closest to him.

Of course, the story of the killer does not completely revolutionize the thriller genre (but was that the intention?). That at least gives it some momentum and sounds like a way for David Fincher to poke fun at himself with this film.

He plays with his square figure, with precise, intelligent cinematography and sends everything out of control to offer us an ultra-pleasant show, both violent and funny (with a strict framework, because after all, we can’t remake ourselves. !).

Because the killer is first and foremost a immersive film, felt by the voice of the killer (at first an unbearably tiresome character and then more engaging action accompaniment), contemporary music and the intense sounds of the killer’s bodies and equipment.

We live and read ourselves through the character of the killer, who joins a long list of fringe figures and questionable morals faced by the consumerism and ultra-connected lifestyles that are ubiquitous in our society in David Fincher’s filmography.

The Assassin’s plot is sometimes confusing, but lends itself to character development that alternates between the literal (the fight scene is crudely memorable) and the metaphorical (the delicious interplay with the expert), but above all, the feet in the carpet move away from their primal beliefs.

Therefore, David Fincher makes a successful return to the thriller genre with a great impressive film that may confuse some, but which tells the story of a certain derailment of a man and the expansion of an era. Simple in appearance, but executed with much fanfare with necessary and effective clarity.

David Fincher’s The Killer is available on Netflix.