Venice Film Festival 2023 reviews: David Fincher’s ‘The Killer’ is ‘a thriller of pure surface and style managed with terrific flair’ and ‘satisfyingly retro’
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“The Killer” bowed at the 2023 Venice Film Festival on Sunday, September 3. Directed by three-time Oscar nominee David Fincher in his first film since 2020’s “Mank,” it stars Michael Fassbender as a hitman. The storyline is described thusly: A man, solitary and cold, methodical and unencumbered by scruples or regrets, the killer waits in the shadows, watching for his next target. And yet the longer he waits, the more he thinks he’s losing his mind, if not his cool. A brutal, bloody and stylish noir story of a professional assassin lost in a world without a moral compass.”
Fincher is said to have been attached to the “Killer” project since 2007, when it was set at Paramount. It followed Fincher over to Netflix under Fincher’s overall deal with the streamer.
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Early reviews have been positive-to-mixed. As of this writing, “The Killer” rates 88% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes based on 16 reviews, with only two classified as fully negative.
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Peter Bradshaw writes in The Guardian, “It is all entertainingly absurd and yet the pure conviction and deadpan focus that Fassbender and Fincher being to this ballet of anonymous professionalism makes it very enjoyable…This is a thriller of pure surface and style and managed with terrific flair and Fassbender’s careworn, inscrutable face is just right for it.”
Damon Wise (Deadline) believes that Fincher’s latest feature is “a spiked cocktail that mixes the wholly mundane with the chillingly macabre, a terrifically lean and violent action movie that might be his most purely satisfying yet…’The Killer’ fully embraces the will to perfection, casting a spell so bewitching that even its hilarious, jet-black streak of absurdist humor doesn’t shatter the mood.” He adds that the movie “provides a lurid kind of escapism we haven’t really seen since the ’60s, a suave, cold-blooded but very, very funny kind of savoir-faire finds the frustrated assassin reflecting on his own predicament and wondering, ‘When was my last nice, quiet drowning?’.”
Stephanie Zacharek (Time) makes the point that even if you’ve seen 100 movies about contract killers, Fincher sticks to the basics in a way that “makes Fincher’s movie a cut above. Instead of overloading his story with fussy layers, Fincher pares everything back to the genre’s essence. What we’re left with is a killer and his conscience, or whatever he’s got that might pass for one. Somehow, in Fincher’s hands, that narrowed focus expands the genre’s possibilities rather than shrinking them – especially with an actor like Michael Fassbender at the center of it all.” She adds, “Fincher sems to be having a great deal of fun with ‘The Killer.’ Though he takes it seriously as a piece of action craftsmanship, there’s nothing overserious about it.”
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Ryan Lattanzio (IndieWire) writes that while “there are few surprises in this straight-line thriller, well-executed within a millimeter of its life,” he also marvels, “Watching a master filmmaker and a masterful actor quietly go to work on a by-the-numbers revenge rampage story is never a bad thing.”
Leslie Felperin (The Hollywood Reporter) opines that “The Killer” is “a satisfyingly retro, location-hopping genre exercise with fisticuffs, gadgets (albeit ones bought from Amazon) and smooth-talking antagonists that all plays like a tongue-in-cheek spoof of James Bond movies, but with a much more amoral antihero. The ending even lands in such a way that Netflix – working with Fincher again even though his admired series ‘Mindhunter’ for them was canceled – could turn this into a franchise.” Felperin also called the movie “an exercise in subverting expectations.”
This marks the second time that Fincher has collaborated with writer Andrew Kevin Walker, who adapted the script from a 12-volume French graphic novel from Alexis Nolent. They previously worked together on “Se7en.” Fincher’s biggest hits as a director were “Se7en,” “Fight Club” and “The Social Network.” His Oscar directing nominations came for “Mank,” “Social Network” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” He’s also back working here with cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt, who won a 2021 Oscar for the black-and-white “Mank.” Fincher will be looking for his fourth nomination and Fassbender his second Academy Award bid – his first two coming in 2014 for “12 Years a Slave” and 2016 for “Steve Jobs.”
Tilda Swinton, who has a supporting role in “The Killer,” could also be in the running for her second Oscar bid after winning the statue for “Michael Clayton” in 2008.
Following its Venice world premiere, “The Killer” will have a short run in select theaters beginning October 27 before landing on Netflix to stream on November 10.
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