No one does neo-noir like David Fincher. Zodiac, Se7en and Gone Girl are all masterpieces in his filmography. After mixed critical opinions for the Oscar-nominated Mank and the quiet cancellation of Mindhunter (no amount of pain will make up for that news), there’s a comfort in seeing him return to the thriller genre where he knows how to build psychological tension about the human condition. And like any director at the top of their game, his latest film The Killer starring Michael Fassbender is worth celebrating.

Based on the graphic novel of the same name by writer Alexis Nolant and illustrator Luca Jacamon, a nameless hitman (played by Fassbender) stakes out his target while on assignment in Paris. When the job goes awry, he faces several repercussions that takes him into the heart of his hired gun services. 

Alongside writer Andrew Kevin Walker, Fincher keeps this adaptation breezy and straightforward. It zips past its opening credits at breakneck speed and dives straight into the hitman’s psyche for a five-chapter saga. 

There’s an element of Edward Norton’s character in Fight Club here – narration entangled with an outlook with a cynical view of the commercialised world. In The Killer, we see our nameless assassin eat a McDonald’s breakfast (while removing the bread), drink a Starbucks, and orders off Amazon between his regulated naps, yoga stretches, and listening to the back catalogue of The Smiths. The narration does take time to get used to as it delves into the meticulousness and thoroughness of his patient routine. But similar to Fight Club, there’s always a darkly comedic undercurrent running throughout.

Fincher’s assured direction manages to fight off the film’s notable flaws. The heavy-handedness of the narration, the occasional lack of character depth or the limited screen time with Charles Parnell’s Hodges and Tilda Swinton’s The Expert show the limitations of Walker’s adapted screenplay. However, what sets it apart from every other ‘hitman’ sub-genre is how much it rewards rather than deters its experience, with Fincher psycho-analysing every move from his leading character. 

Fassbender delivers a career-best performance as a cold-blooded, amoral character with a so-called ethical code that’s always littered in contradiction as soon as it becomes personal (even though he tells himself it is not). It’s fun to watch someone who believes (unquestionably) in the packaged version of their own brand identity (stick to the plan, empathy is weakness, trust no one) rather than accept the truth of what drives him to kill. By embodying a dual role, Fassbender switches effortlessly from the thoughts in his head to the physicality in the moment, and there’s only one word to describe the physical interactions – brutal.

It’s great to see Fassbender back on form and in his element. It has genuinely felt like a long time since we’ve seen him in a role that has ‘meat on the bones’ – having fun unpicking and unravelling every layered nuance of his character. Between interrogating a local taxi driver or fighting a roid-rage, Antiques Roadshow-loving assassin known as The Brute (Sala Baker), it all encapsulates the hitman’s chilling persona down to a tee. Fassbender plays these moments in near silence with the driving tension coming from the secondary characters themselves who stand between his ethical code and the success of the mission. It comes as no surprise that these moments result in a shocking conclusion. That type of performance would have been a call-up for James Bond in another multiverse.

But the film’s most memorable feature comes in its sound design. As expected from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (Fincher’s regular collaborators since The Social Network), the score is deliberately jarring. Mixing their traditional synth notes with The Smiths, the best way is to describe it as an audio dissonance where the sound intentionally dips in/out depending on how the hitman is listening to music. In combination with Fassbender’s performance, it adds tension and a dreading sense of foreboding.

A rewatch of Fincher’s filmography will ultimately determine where this film lands on the chart, but The Killer possesses so much style that it continues to showcase the high bar that Fincher continues to set. Fincher and Fassbender are a match made in crime-noir heaven, and I hope they find another project to work together on soon.

THE KILLER screened as part of the BFI’s London Film Festival 2023. Out on Netflix 10th November 2023