“Stick to the plan.”
In the beginning of director David Fincher’s latest thriller, “The Killer,” we find the titular
contract killer, played brilliantly by Michael Fassbender, perched in an abandoned WeWork,
scouting his high-profile target in a neighboring Parisian window.
We intercept the unnamed hitman’s nihilistic thoughts via voiceover as he patiently waits. He
insists that these assassination rituals are nothing more than workaday fare, yet his disquieting demeanor suggests otherwise.
“Stick to the plan. Forbid empathy.”
This mantra rears its head throughout the film’s brisk one hour, 58 minute run time, with “stick to the plan” serving as a sort of anaphoric meditation for its sociopathic narrator.
A hit gone awry sets the narrative in motion. Once the inflection point between personal and
professional lives becomes blurred, it becomes clear how the killer’s seemingly steadfast principles, as succinctly expressed by his mantra, begin to crumble.
This tension rising to the surface is rather workaday in its own right, fulfilling the expectations of
the enduring fictional hitman genre. Yet it’s how these expectations are then capitalized on and
upended that transform “The Killer” into more than its inherently B-movie premise.
Fincher, a famously exacting filmmaker known for his fastidious behind-the-scenes approach,
finds himself in familiar territory and sticks to the plan, so to speak, yet he pushes himself in new
and exciting (and perhaps autobiographical) creative directions.
“The Killer” snugly fits into the director’s cinematic oeuvre, which now spans 12 feature films
over 30 years, while also elaborating on his creative ethos in a surprising and playful manner.
It also subscribes to the recent trend of auteur filmmakers using protagonists to double as stand-
ins for themselves and comment on the world at large – Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City” and
Alejandro Iñárritu’s “Bardo” come to mind. Fincher, in an equally chilling and hilarious manner,
locates his perfect avatar in an assassin.
Is directing motion pictures as transactional as contract killing? Fincher, like his deeply disturbed
protagonist, would argue the results are not personal, yet the comparison remains humorously
apt.
After all, “lining up the perfect shot” is a skill set that could be interpreted in either direction.
Not unlike Fincher operating as a hired gun jumping from project to project, bashfully
dismantling the myth of auteur theory, Fassbender’s steely killer jumps from location to location,
assuming aliases at the drop of a hat.
Evidently, constructing a sniper rifle is eerily similar to constructing a digital camera.
What happens when one of these hits becomes personal? One could draw a straight line to the
2020 release of Fincher’s passion project “Mank,” which was brought to the small screen from a
script by Fincher’s late father and was met with a rather divisive response.
Intertextual metaphors aside, what renders “The Killer” fascinating is its relationship to
Fincher’s past work and thematic ideas.
While many of Fincher’s bonafide classics tackle the universal struggle of our fragile proximity
to others, from the likes of the relationship between Nick and Amy Dunne in “Gone Girl” to the
most notable example of the split personality conflict in “Fight Club,” “The Killer” is about our
fragile proximity to self. What do we define ourselves by and what happens when these
seemingly concrete definitions become muddled? Were they ever concrete to begin with?
Autobiographical? Perhaps. One of the best movies of the year? Most definitely.
“The Killer” is now streaming on Netflix.
