David Fincher is a great director. One of my favorite movies of 2011 was “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” There’s one scene in this movie that’s straight out of that.
It would be silly to list all of Fincher’s films (although it’s worth noting, he re-teamed with screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker of “Se7en”). It would also be silly to mention all the other hitman movies there have been, but I’m going to mention a few. Since this movie is about a hit that goes wrong, I thought of “In Bruges” (which is half of a great movie) and “The Matador” (Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear), a criminally underrated film.
The last picture the great Billy Wilder directed, “Buddy Buddy '' got horrible reviews, but I loved it. Nothing like watching hitman Walter Matthau trying to take out a witness, only to be bothered by the suicidal Jack Lemmon in the hotel room next door. Others might think of the Walter Matthau/Jack Lemmon duo because the killer in this uses names like Felix Unger and Oscar Madison (as well as Sam Malone, Lou Grant, Archibald Bunker, Howard Cunningham, George Jefferson, and other sitcom characters). That elicited chuckles from us critics watching the screening, but in reality, is that a smart thing to do on fake passports? But I digress.
The opening of the film starts with hitman (Michael Fassbender) patiently waiting to complete a job, and narrating how to do it properly. The things he says are sometimes clever, but mostly grating cliches that sound pretentious; yet it is interesting that he’s doing yoga and trying to get his heart rate down before making the big shot through the window across the street. I’m just not sure it makes sense that this bad guy that is going to be taken out, has a dominatrix show up in his room, as the bodyguards leave, and the curtains are open. Now, I’ve never had illicit affairs in hotel rooms, but I’m guessing in “Affairs 101” they tell you to not be seen going in, check in under a different name, and have curtains shut before anybody (or these days, any drone) could see in. Now in Brian de Palma’s “Body Double” it made sense that the peeping tom saw the sex worker through a window, because he was being set up. Again, I digress.
It’s the dominatrix that is shot by the killer, and on the run he goes. Of course, when his mess is being cleaned up, that means he needs to be eliminated. So the bad guys pay a visit to the love of his life, causing him to go all John Wick with vengeance on them. Speaking of which, other than the first, the Wick movies have been awful. And “The Killer” has one fight scene, that’s better than anything from those movies, and is simply the best fight scene I’ve seen on screen since Cronenberg’s bath house scene in “Eastern Promises” (Viggo Mortensen) in 2007. The way this fight scene is done in the dark and the licks the protagonist has to take…just brilliant. It’s worth seeing if just for that. The natural, night time lighting the filmmakers used throughout, really worked well.
The score helps the story along, done by frequent collaborators Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails). And it’s interesting that the killer uses music to calm him, always playing songs by The Smiths (and is there really a better song than “How Soon is Now?”). One of my pet peeves is when movies try to drop in ultra-hip needle-drops. Sure, the songs in “Baby Driver” were great, but the story and way they were used was idiotic.
The opening credits reminded me of the ones in “Dexter” and “Dragon Tattoo” and the third act scene with Tilda Swinton reminds me of why I feel she’s one of the Top 3 actresses working today.
This might be the weakest script Fincher has worked with, and you might get sick of the narrator saying “Anticipate, don’t improvise.” Yet the cliches and predictability aren’t a problem, because it’s all so stylishly done. There was also some fun dark humor.
At the screening, I ran into a guy I played racquetball with years ago who was doing work on the movie theater. He came into the movie after missing the beginning, and loved it (although he had to point out a few flaws with how the killer supposedly “covered his tracks”).
This is a film everyone will enjoy. It’s a Netflix original that will be in a few theaters.
3 stars out of 5.