The Killer: Michael Fassbender elevates David Fincher’s sleek, hollow entertainment

This fun doodle from David Fincher has nowhere to go, but it’s a pleasing enough meander around OCD and amorality. Based on a French graphic novel by Alexis “Matz” Nolent, and bolstered by the voiceover and presence of Michael Fassbender, The Killer allows Fincher to lean into his chilly gifts for genre, without too much exertion. Everybody is cruising, including the world-weary protagonist, who delivers his extensive narration with a practised flatline effect.

If you’re seeking the depth or punch of such obvious precursors as Le Samouraï, you’re in the wrong place, but Fassbender, at least, channels and subverts hard-boiled heroes of yore with enough heft to counterweight the hollowness of the drama.

With a hat tip to Marlowe and Fincher’s poppier 1999 hit, Fight Club, Fassbender’s nameless contract killer provides a TedTalk on his chosen profession while he goes about his job. With The Smiths sighing in his earbuds, he does a little yoga and sets up a high-power rifle in an abandoned Parisian apartment across from his mark. He has arrived anonymously in the city, disguised as a German tourist he once spotted in London, “because no one wants to interact with a German tourist”. The attire works, but the hit goes wrong, and the assassin flees to the Dominican Republic, using a series of aliases and the stride of an undercover cop show from the 1970s.

At home there’s a damsel in distress, and the titular killer heads out, nailgun in hand, for revenge. As he zigzags between Florida (where he faces down a pitbull) and New York (where he meets a criminally underused Tilda Swinton), he spits amusingly jaded zingers: “WWJWBD? What Would John Wilkes Booth Do?” or “Each and every stop of the way, ask, ‘What’s in it for me?”

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A subplot or twist might have elevated Andrew Kevin Walker’s script above speech bubbles, but a shadowy fight set-piece, Erik Messerschmidt’s cinematography, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score make for sleek entertainment.