The Killer

David Fincher's The Killer doesn't waste time. It immediately begins with 55-seconds of opening credits once you press play on Netflix. It's all to get to the captivating story of an unnamed assassin (Michael Fassbender) wasting time before his next kill.

That's not as boring as I make it sound. This killer, created by Alexis "Matz" Nolent and Luc Jacamon for their graphic novels, waxes poetic in his narration about life, boredom, his profession, Popeye and other things. He sets up shop in an unfinished office room in Paris as he waits for his next target to check into the hotel across the street. Neither he nor the film care who this target is; to him, the target is a paycheck. It all goes wrong at the big moment when he accidentally shoots the man's dominatrix (Monique Ganderton).

The Killer flees for his home in the Dominican Republic. His employers have marked him for death, and the hired guns have already hospitalized his girlfriend, Magdala (Sophie Charlotte). This makes it very personal for a killer who has always remained neutral in his line of work. He decides to track down the hired guns, his employers, and whoever ordered the job in the first place. That's basically it, but not in that order.

The screenplay by Seven writer Andrew Kevin Walker is neatly divided into six chapters, each taking The Killer to one city with one goal (i.e., Chapter 1: Paris/The Target). It's as darkly hilarious as it is unnerving to hear how casual he is about his line of work. This is a man who complains that his job won't make a dent in the world's population and uses sitcom characters for his fake names. His narrating is often interrupted by the real world, like when he's almost discovered by a mailman, or when his ex-handler, Hodges (Charles Parnell), takes far quicker to die than he estimates. The few moments that Fassbender has on-screen dialogue are some of the film's tensest scenes. All in all, it's an unconventional, yet captivating performance.

It helps to have a great editor like Kirk Baxter as an asset. We're perfectly tense as we wait for the big moment in Paris, with The Killer's watch measuring his heartrate as a countdown and are similarly hooked as he makes his escape. His confrontation with "The Brute" (Sala Baker), one of the hired guns, is a long fight in which the man smashes up his own home as much as The Killer. He gets the other hired gun, "The Expert" (Tilda Swinton), after a well-acted and morbidly funny chat as she realizes her number's up. You'll have little trouble remembering a film with these moments, nor the excellent Reznor & Ross score accentuating them. What else can I say?

I should mention the film's most sympathetic character. Her name is Dolores (Kerry O'Malley), Hodge's secretary and the embodiment of being at the wrong place and wrong time. She's somewhat complicit in Hodges's enterprises, but she's not as malicious as the man's hired guns. We do sympathize with her as The Killer extracts some names for her and gives her an "accidental" death. A bit less sympathetic, but somewhat pitiful, is Claybourne (Arliss Howard), the guy who hired The Killer in the first place. His confrontation is saved for last.

The Killer is a well-acted and well-paced crime thriller. Its main character doesn't say much on-screen, but when he speaks, you listen. Its sound designers and cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt make it a great film to hear and watch wherever you can. Indeed, you should watch it wherever and whenever you can. It's just that good.