November 12, 2023
As an unnamed professional Killer (Michael Fassbender) waited for his target to check into a hotel room in the line of his sniper rifle's sight, he contemplated on the routines of his job, psyching himself up with his pre-kill mantra, accompanied by the music of the Smiths. Unexpectedly, his target arrived accompanied by a female sex worker. When the assassin pulled on his trigger, however, the bullet missed its mark.
When the Killer's girlfriend Magdala (Sophie Charlotte) was mauled in their hideout in the Dominican Republic, he then methodically tracked all the people responsible for the assault -- a taxi driver Leo (Gabriel Polanco), his lawyer boss Hodges (Charles Parnell), Hodges's secretary (Kerry O'Malley), the brutish goon from Florida (Sala Baker), the woman who looked like a Q-Tip (Tilda Swinton) and the Client (Arliss Howard).
The anticipation for this film is mainly because of its director David Fincher. His body of work consisted of popular and acclaimed thrillers like "Se7en" (1995), "Fight Club" (1999), "Zodiac" (2007), and Oscar fare like "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (2008), "The Social Network" (2010) and "Mank" (2020). News of Fincher's interest in the source graphic novel came out as early as 2007, only for the film to come to pass now.
The film began with a 30-minute long voice-over monologue by Michael Fassbender, narrating his process and his thoughts as he went about his systematic procedures, while waiting for his target to arrive until he actually fired the bullet. We would hear more of these internal monologues later as he took out more names on his hit list. Fassbender's Killer was cool and heartless, as he repeatedly convinced himself that empathy was a sign of weakness.
Action junkies may complain that violent scenes may be few and far-between here. However, these scenes were satisfyingly cold and brutal in execution, and with tension and suspense slowly built up as only Fincher can deliver. As an additional perk for fans of classic American TV sitcoms, recognizing the various aliases the Killer used on his plane tickets and bank accounts (like Archibald Bunker, Lou Grant, Sam Malone) was rather fun. 6/10.
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