THE KILLER 😊

PREMISE

After a fateful near-miss, an assassin battles his employers, and himself, on an international manhunt he for some reason insists isn’t personal.

THE GOOD STUFF

ATMOSPHERE- The killer seems to be a movie about the job of killing folks and not necessarily a person. A rather rigorous job with consistent traveling, endless stakeouts, little time to eat or sleep, and a rather thorough breakdown of the mentality that you have to have in order to maintain that profession it’s also a non-stop revolving door of extremely precise movements behaviors and actions that is an incredibly fascinating watch.

FASSBENDER- Absolutely world-class. Michael Fassbender has been one of the best in the world for quite some time now, and he tends to excel with characters that have a lot to do. His character in this film kind of doesn’t have a lot to do, and this character is the polar opposite of what we’ve seen him do before in a lot of the bigger movies that he’s done. This could be considered to be minimalistic stuff here.

However, the thing about being a world-class character actor is that there is never an uncomplicated moment. In the wrong hands a character such as this that wanders through the film with mostly no dialogue, and being led by voiceover could come off as a pretty lazy performance. But Fassbender is a complete and total horror movie character here. Amazing stuff. I don’t know if it’s Oscar-worthy, and it is certainly not “Oscar material”, but in a perfect world….just sayin’.

THE BRUTE- The killer is a movie told in 5 chapters. The fourth chapter of this story is capped off with the absolute best fight sequence that I’ve seen in a movie this year, and honestly for quite some time. The great movie fight sequences tell a story within themselves aside from the storyline of the actual movie, and a lot of stuff happens in the time frame of this fight sequence when it comes to just how savage, the Fassbender character is. The effects of the fight sequence are felt throughout the rest of the film, which I also greatly appreciated.

THE BAD STUFF

THE “HERO”- As previously mentioned, this is a movie about a job and its particular specificities. Because of that, this isn’t necessarily a story about a person. I think the point of this story is to not know the person and to witness how the job pinballs him from country to country in ridiculously dangerous situation, after ridiculously dangerous situation. Fine. That can work for what it is.

But when you try to incorporate human elements into the story in order to give the character motivations and actual emotional stakes it just seems forced. The killer is ultimately a revenge story (I think), but to tell the story of a revenge film without detailing the emotions that would make a character want to get revenge is pretty asinine after everything is said and done. And because of that…..

THE UGLY STUFF

THE ENDING- Of course, because this is a website called spoiler free reviews I cannot go into a lot of detail as to why the ending of this movie is completely ineffective and goes absolutely nowhere. But it was impossible for this movie to stick the landing when it comes to an actual story. It was just not possible given how things are structured here.

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At the end of the day, this is a really kick-ass 2-hour pilot for a great television show about the profession of being an assassin. The killer instead feels like there were multiple books written about this character and all the authors came together to try and collectively mesh all of their their books into one storyline. It’s an incredibly fascinating watch, and I’m sure David Fincher fans will try and find a deeper meaning with something like this, but it really isn’t there.

This is style over substance at the end of the day.  

THE KILLER is in select theaters now and will premiere on Netflix on November 10th