While it may be an unpopular opinion, the past decade has not been the peak of David Fincher’s career in terms of his cinematic output – he successfully helmed Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, but couldn’t prevent it from descending into pulpy cliche on more than one occasion which has prevented it from being seen as genuinely great art, and the less said about his misguided attempt to pay tribute to his father’s passion project in Mank, the better, especially in terms of how it attempts to revise consolidated history. It is almost as if his television output has been more successful, since shows like Mindhunter and Love, Death and Robots (while not fully helmed by him) show the sheer scope of his directorial gifts, something we never find in some of his recent films – and it doesn’t help that he takes several years in between projects, so seeing his growth or development as an artist is much scarcer than it used to be. Unfortunately, his most recent effort doesn’t inspire too much confidence, with his adaptation of The Killer, based on the graphic novel by Alexis “Matz” Nolent and Luc Jacamon, is yet another project that seems ambitious in concept, but falters in execution, turning into more of a chore than anything else, which is quite unfortunate for one of the few directors working today whose name is immediately associated with quality and strong artistic merit. The story of a cynical assassin finding himself on a trail of revenge after a botched assignment is one that had a lot of potential, and in the hands of Fincher, it was certainly very promising, so the realization that it is perhaps his most bland and artistically questionable film comes as quite a surprise, even to those of us who have not been as moved by his recent output as others, with The Killer seemingly just continuing a streak of ambitious projects that lack nuance or any sense of genuine curiosity, something that was always present in his earlier films.

The Killer is a film that is about as original as its title, which is one of the many very bland aspects of the film (although we can’t criticize the choice too much, as this was the original title of the graphic novel series – but this hasn’t stopped Fincher from attempting more interesting titles for some of his other films), and which essentially sets the tone for what is a mostly frustrating experience. At its heart, we can tell what the intention behind this film was – a glimpse into the mind of a man who not only finds it very easy to kill people but who has grown to loathe the routine aspects of his vocation, finding it boring and lacking in any satisfaction. Interestingly, this is our exact response to this film as a whole – it is cold and calculated to the point of being profoundly dull, and it never seems to be leading to a coherent point, which is even more peculiar considering the very nature of the story is that it is told in chapters, each one centred around a different character that the titular assassin needs to confront, and by this structure, it is supposed to have a sense of progression. The problem is that The Killer is a film that is far too methodical – Fincher has a reputation for crafting his films with meticulous attention to detail, which has benefitted works like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Zodiac, the latter his peak as a filmmaker and the gold-standard for true crime dramas – the difference is that those films did not get caught up in the details, and instead found new and inventive ways to explore the subject matter, rather than just being a relentlessly cyclical action thriller that lacks colour, both visually and narratively. We could maybe understand this approach as being one in which the director wants to create an atmosphere of dreariness, for us to feel the same sense of drab apathy as the protagonist. Even if this was the intention (which isn’t clear) it doesn’t improve the film, nor does it make its underlying concepts any less opaque.

The central character in The Killer is unquestionably a promising one – a mysterious individual of indeterminate origin who has gone past the point of moral ambiguity and has instead settled into a blasé existence in which not even committing cold-blood murder can raise his pulse. A film based around the reflections of such a character could be fantastic, granted it is done well – unfortunately, The Killer fumbles in terms of the most fundamental component of the film, which is casting the role. Michael Fassbender has done good work in the past, and with the right material, he can be excellent. However, he’s not a strong enough actor to carry a film like this – his best work usually entails characters that express themselves in some way or another, mostly silent roles, and where most of the story is conveyed through voiceover narration (which also highlights one of his shortcomings, which is the inability to do a convincing American accent – considering we aren’t ever given any information about who this character is, the decision to give him a nationality seems strange, especially since part of Fassbender’s appeal as an actor has been his sense of cultural ambiguity), so the film falters even before it reaches the peak of the narrative. This unnamed character could have been interesting with the right actor, someone who could convey that sense of complete ambiguity, which is not something we ever get from Fassbender. There’s some good work from the supporting cast, but they are all under the same constraints, which is that none of these characters are that interesting. The sole exception is Tilda Swinton, who is quite good as a rival assassin whose interaction with the protagonist is the most climactic moment of the film – but with only eight minutes, there isn’t much she can do to elevate an already overlong film. The Killer is a film where the performances are not bad (in fact, they’re generally quite good), but the lacklustre character development is ultimately one of the main reasons it never feels like it amounts to much, which is a strange turn of events for a film that should have done the opposite.

There is not a moment in The Killer where you cannot sense the exact machinations that went into its conception – from the first needle-drop of “Well I Wonder” (one of about a dozen songs by The Smiths that exclusively make up the soundtrack), to every line of dialogue, you can tell exactly what Fincher and his collaborators were trying to achieve, and it proves to be nothing more than two hours of calculated choices, in terms of both the writing and execution. The screenplay, written by Andrew Kevin Walker (who did solid work in the past, including with Fincher on Se7en), is perhaps the weakest part – it is mostly a humourless affair (something that we’ve found becoming increasingly common in Fincher’s recent work) and is filled to the brim with cliches. This is a clear case of intention not matching the final result – what Walker seemed to envision was a stream-of-consciousness approach where we are given access to every intimate thought that flows through the protagonist’s mind, to show a range of emotions and to demonstrate his various existential quandaries. This is an interesting idea, but when it results in a script that includes lines such as “Who needs a Trojan Horse when you have Postmates?” and references to contemporary concepts that instantly date the film to this specific moment, it becomes far less impactful. The screenplay is only one aspect of a film, but when the entire project is built around this element (especially since the cinematography by Erik Messerschmidt is not particularly interesting, especially after his more striking work in Mank, perhaps the only redeemable quality of that film), it would have been quite difficult to develop this film beyond being a muddled jumble of misguided ideas, and there is only so much that Fincher can do to elevate the material beyond trying to find nuances in between the more ambigious spaces. The Killer is the result of a director trying to assert so much control over a story that was not interesting enough as it was envisioned to require this level of insipid dullness.

Even putting aside any bias about Fincher’s previous work, it’s difficult to not view The Killer as an accumulation of a couple of decades of an artistic reputation being over-inflated to the point where it borders on being a parody of itself. Considering his earlier films were genuinely engaging, interesting and complex works that were able to blend his raw ambition with traditional aspects of their respective genres, it seems odd that he has descended into making films that don’t bear any artistic signature whatsoever. The Killer could have been directed by just about anyone, and it almost feels anonymous in terms of directorial vision, since there’s very little flourish or flair to be found anywhere within this film, which is an immediate cause for concern when dealing with someone promoted as one of the best working filmmakers, something that we don’t need to deny, but rather start to question, based on how divisive his recent output as been. For what it’s worth, The Killer was never going to be the film to ignite a new set of artistic curiosities in Fincher – it is certainly reminiscent of his earlier psychological thrillers, which were dense and dark examinations of human morality with ambiguous protagonists and a reckless love of violence that ultimately did serve a purpose. However, it still feels oddly regressive for a director who has become selective, making his choice to helm this quite strange, since there isn’t necessarily anything in this film we haven’t seen him achieve with more success in the past. It’s far too conventional and lacks any sense of genuine energy or an artistic spark that we have come to expect from the director. It is a traditional potboiler thriller, but not one that is particularly entertaining or all that compelling, and it ultimately just proves to be a chore and not something that we can muster much enthusiasm for, a bizarre turn of events from a director whose work, whether good or bad, is always worth our time, the same not necessarily be true of this film.