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‘The Killer’: A Frigid (and Bloody) Portrayal of Middle-Aged Ennui
What do you value when nothing matters?
David Fincher’s newest film The Killer, starring the always great to watch Michael Fassbender, perpetuates the director’s ironic passion for neo-noirish nihilism. Fincher might be the only director to have achieved A-list status making essentially highly-stylized misery porn. Even Kubrick’s cold, clinical style often gave some light at the end of each cinematic dark tunnel he crafted. Whereas Fincher tends to suffocate his films in cynicism, reducing his characters to puppets of impulse, hormones, and the wretched post-modern world.
Though it’s not to say Fincher’s works aren’t insightful and stimulating. Indeed, he may very well be the best director working today. But in the sense of being an eye surgeon who’s the world’s preeminent cataract remover. Admirable, of course, even if their work is gut-wrenching to watch at times.
In the case of The Killer, however, our protagonist is not drawn to his deadly profession as a hired assassin out of a need, or even a real desire to kill, but more a matter of needing a profession in which to display his competency and allows him to channel his detachment from humanity. Or maybe it was the job itself that made him that way. Or perhaps it doesn’t matter. As he states in the…
