'The Killer' review: Fincher, Fassbender give muted assassin tale its pulse

David Fincher is in vacation mode with "The Killer." He's loose, he's free, and that state of relaxation allows him to make his most affecting work in more than a decade.

Fincher has earned the right to kick his feet up, after taking on the Old Hollywood biopic "Mank" in 2020 and heavyweight adaptations of massive literary projects "Gone Girl" and "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" in 2014 and 2011, respectively. Prior to that was just, oh, "The Social Network." Dude's been grinding. It's OK if he eases off the gas a bit.

"The Killer" is no one else's idea of a laid-back film. It's an exacting portrait of a loner assassin on a revenge mission after a job gone wrong. But it's also the study of a life lived in solitude, a character examination of a high-end perfectionist who prefers the company of silence, and it's neatly tailored to fit Fincher's cool, distant, austere aesthetics. The movie is as refreshingly minimalist as its lead character's lifestyle.

Michael Fassbender plays the lead, a guy so removed from personal connection he doesn't even get a name. (In the credits, he's referred to as the Killer.) He's a hired assassin with a Buddhist's sense of calm, repeating his mantras to himself — "stick to the plan," "anticipate, don't improvise," "fight only the battle you're paid to fight" — to help keep his heartrate low and his head in tact. He also religiously listens to the Smiths, and his proclivity for Morrissey and co. is not the only thing that makes him seem like a cousin of "American Psycho's" psycho serial killer and pop music aficionado, Patrick Bateman.

After a fast-paced opening credits sequence, "The Killer" immediately slows its heartrate way down, picking up with the Killer in Paris as he readies for a job. Fincher, reteaming with "Se7en" screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker (who adapted the French comic from Alexis "Matz" Nolent and Luc Jacamon), takes his time, stretches out his arms, and lets Fassbender's droll narration do the heavy lifting, putting us inside the headspace of the character. Pulling the trigger is the easy part. It's the waiting, the silence, the isolation that is the job, and it requires a certain level of heightened patience. For the Killer, and for Fincher, the waiting is everything.

When the job goes left, the Killer is hunted down at his place in the Dominican Republic, and he goes on a mission to exact revenge on those who attempted to exact revenge on him. (That's another byproduct of the assassin lifestyle one must be willing to shoulder, all the revenge.) "The Killer" hops to New Orleans to New York to Chicago, as the Killer changes aliases (look for references to several classic sitcom characters), maintains a low profile and listens to an entirely unhealthy amount of "The Queen is Dead" as he cleans up a trail of blood that eventually leads him to a showdown with someone named the Expert, played by ice queen Tilda Swinton.

"The Killer" keeps viewers at a distance, but that's the point, and its darkly comic sense of humor eventually acts as a warming agent. Fincher's frames and his lighting are as precise and exacting as his killer's meticulous sense of self and style. Which is to say Fincher is on his home turf here, and he works with the confidence of a director who is making his 12th movie and taking one for himself. He hits a clean bullseye.

agraham@detroitnews.com

'The Killer'

GRADE: A-

Rated R: for strong violence, language and brief sexuality

Running time: 108 minutes

At MJR Southgate, on Netflix Nov. 10