World
Movie Review: In David Fincher’s ‘The Killer,’ an assassin hides in plain sight
It’s a noir staple to open with a bit of narration, but once the nameless hit-man protagonist of David Fincher’s “The Killer” starts gabbing, he doesn’t stop.
As Fincher’s assassin (Michael Fassbender) awaits his target from a high, unfinished floor in a Paris building that looks out on the home of his mark, his inner monologue runs with a smooth, affectless monotone. His musings are a mix of professional tips (“Anticipate, don’t improvise”), nihilistic existential observations (“Most people refuse to believe that the great beyond is anything more than a cold, infinite void”) and sincere self-reflections (“I’m not exceptional, I’m just apart”).
That last line is the most telling one. “The Killer” is a terse, minimalist thriller in the cool, cold-hearted tradition of Jean Pierre Melville’s “Le Samouraï.” But while its methodical and solitary assassin acts and moves like cunning killers we’ve seen before, he blends into a modern background. He doesn’t wear a trench coat or fedora; he dresses like a German tourist, with a dopey bucket hat. He shops for tools on Amazon. He picks up supplies at Home Depot. His position in Paris is an unused WeWork space.
In “The Killer,” an agent of death is hiding in plain sight. He’s an assassin for our homogeneous, corporate world operating in the same spaces we all do. He eats McDonalds. He drives a white Avis rental van that’s the exact same as a dozen others in the rental car parking lot. Sameness is his superpower.
That also means that his nihilism is ours, too. “The Killer,” which begins streaming Friday on Netflix, is a thriller where pointlessness isn’t just lurking in the shadows. It’s everywhere, even in a movie plot that grows increasingly resistant to offering the usual genre satisfactions. Fassbender’s hitman, a background actor supreme, is a lethal manifestation of our soulless environment.
In that opening scene, he boasts of having a batting average (1.000, he brags) ‘better than Ted Williams.’ Yet the job goes badly. In the ensuing turmoil, he races to erase his footsteps but not before a dissatisfied client has his girlfriend (Sophie Charlotte) nearly beaten to death at their clandestine Dominican Republic home.
He embarks on a location-hopping mission to eliminate those responsible, an odd twist for an assassin who, at length, preaches disaffection. Much doesn’t quite fit in “The Killer.” That he even has a live-in girlfriend — we barely see her and his thoughts never again turn back to her — seems unlikely. A revenge plot also doesn’t quite suit such a dispassionate protagonist. “Forbid empathy,” he says. And the movie, too, can be withholding of anything like emotion. The most distinct thing about Fassbender’s killer is that, like Patrick Bateman bopped to Huey Lewis and the News, he listens exclusively to the Smiths.
There’s much pleasure to be found in the unnamed hit man’s proficiency, just as there is in Fincher’s cool finesse. Here, the director — long known for his own meticulous rigor — is working with some regular collaborators, among them screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker (“Se7en”), composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross ( “The Social Network” ) and cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt (“Mank” ). And there’s a kinetic thrill to seeing Fincher back in B-movie territory. (The script is based on a French graphic novel by Alexis “Matz” Nolent.)
Especially good is a nighttime sequence set in Florida that begins and ends with a bloodthirsty dog and in between features violent hand-to-hand combat that careens through glass and walls. The scene, like several others in “The Killer,” is a filmmaking feat of control. Fassbender, a natural at playing a loner (see “Shame”), is captivating throughout because he so possesses the movie’s chief traits of guile and a deadpan sense of humor.
Everything here is tantalizingly close to calculated perfection that it comes almost as a surprise how “The Killer” ends up missing its mark. You could call it a feature of the film’s existentialism, but “The Killer” increasingly is working, albeit proficiently, in a vacuum. Our hitman travels from place to place — always with fake passports with the names of TV characters like Felix Unger, Lou Grant or Sam Malone — but we don’t get anywhere deeper with him or anything else. Meaningless may be the point in “The Killer,” but at a certain point in this stylishly composed but empty vessel, you feel like pleading as another Fincher protagonist once did: What’s in the box?
“The Killer,” a Netflix release is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for strong violence, language and brief sexuality. Running time: 118 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
World
Clashes erupt between university students and riot police outside Egyptian embassy in Beirut
Clashes erupted on Monday between pro-Palestinian university students and riot police outside the Egyptian embassy in Beirut. Dozens of university students gathered outside the embassy, holding Palestinian flags and calling on the Egyptian government to open the Rafah border crossing and allow humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip.
Clashes erupted on Monday between pro-Palestinian university students and riot police outside the Egyptian embassy in Beirut. Dozens of university students gathered outside the embassy, holding Palestinian flags and calling on the Egyptian government to open the Rafah border crossing and allow humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip.
World
Israeli excavators discover 2,300-year-old gold ring at City of David site
Israeli researchers digging in Jerusalem’s City of David archeological site have uncovered an “exceedingly well-preserved” 2,300-year-old gold ring that is believed to have belonged to a boy or girl that lived in the area during the Hellenistic period.
The piece of jewelry, which is “made of gold and set with a red precious stone, apparently a garnet,” has “accumulated no rust nor suffered other weathering of time,” the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced Monday.
“I was sifting earth through the screen and suddenly saw something glitter,” Tehiya Gangate, a City of David excavation team member, said in a statement. “I immediately yelled, ‘I found a ring, I found a ring!’ Within seconds everyone gathered around me, and there was great excitement.”
“This is an emotionally moving find, not the kind you find every day,” she added. “In truth I always wanted to find gold jewelry, and I am very happy this dream came true – literally a week before I went on maternity leave.”
EXPEDITION TO ‘HOLY GRAIL’ SHIPWRECK FULL OF GOLD, EMERALDS BEGINS IN CARIBBEAN SEA
The Israel Antiquities Authority says the ring was “recently found in the joint Israel Antiquities Authority-Tel Aviv University excavation in the City of David, part of the Jerusalem Walls National Park, with the support of the Elad Foundation.”
It will be put on display to the public in early June during Jerusalem Day.
“The ring is very small. It would fit a woman’s pinky, or a young girl or boy’s finger,” the IAA cited Dr. Yiftah Shalev and Riki Zalut Har-Tov, Israel Antiquities Authority Excavation Directors, as saying.
Tel Aviv University Professor Yuval Gadot and excavator Efrat Bocher added that, “The recently found gold ring joins other ornaments of the early Hellenistic period found in the City of David excavations, including the horned-animal earring and the decorated gold bead.”
WOMAN OUT FOR A WALK STUMBLES UPON ONCE IN A DECADE DISCOVERY
“Whereas in the past we found only a few structures and finds from this era, and thus most scholars assumed Jerusalem was then a small town, limited to the top of the southeastern slope (“City of David”) and with relatively very few resources, these new finds tell a different story: The aggregate of revealed structures now constitute an entire neighborhood,” they said.
“They attest to both domestic and public buildings, and that the city extended from the hilltop westward. The character of the buildings – and now of course, the gold finds and other discoveries, display the city’s healthy economy and even its elite status. It certainly seems that the city’s residents were open to the widespread Hellenistic style and influences prevalent also in the eastern Mediterranean Basin,” the researchers added.
The IAA says “Gold jewelry was well-known in the Hellenistic world, from Alexander the Great’s reign onward” as “his conquests helped spread and transport luxury goods and products.”
World
The Take: Why all eyes are on Rafah
PodcastPodcast, The Take
The aftermath of a deadly Israeli attack on a tent camp for displaced Palestinians in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah.
Days after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to stop its operation in Rafah, Israel hit a tent camp there, killing more than 45 displaced people. As the world condemns the attack, Israel’s war on Gaza continues.
In this episode:
- Akram Al Satarri, freelance journalist
- Imran Khan, (@ajimran) Al Jazeera senior correspondent
Episode credits:
This episode was produced by David Enders and Khaled Sultan, with Manahil Naveed, Catherine Nouhan and our host Malika Bilal.
It was edited by Amy Walters.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our lead of audience development and engagement is Aya Elmileik and Adam Abou-Gad is our engagement producer.
Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s head of audio.
Connect with us:
@AJEPodcasts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Threads and YouTube
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