The Killer (2023, David Fincher) (Patreon)

60/100

Got unduly excited by the rapid-fire, smoothly carouseled opening credit sequence, which felt—much as Se7en's did, with an assist from Trent Reznor in both cases—like a harbinger of something new and unsettling. (It's not the montage itself so much as its glossy implacability, each image of impending death elegantly giving way to the next, like a conveyor belt of snuff-movie showrooms. Watched it four times in a row before proceeding.) That no doubt made the film's subsequent familiarity even more of a disappointment. To the extent that we're supposed to take The Killer seriously, as a moody existential portrait of homicidal efficiency infected by unwanted human feeling, it's retilling ground that Le Samouraï (which isn't my favorite Melville to begin with, though I like it) made fertile half a century ago, and doing so less persuasively. If you instead perceive it as a po-faced comedy about a total dingleberry, powered by superficially badass but deliberately inane voiceover narration, it's a lot more satisfying...but I have difficulty squaring that interpretation with the Killer expertly achieving his every goal (after the initial botched hit that sets the plot in motion), generally with minor hiccups to which he successfully adapts. Might be an adaptation issue, since I'm skeptical that the graphic novel seeks to satirize its protagonist's lone-wolf philosophy; were one taking that approach from scratch, the otherwise silly running gag in which the Killer uses sitcom-character aliases—just about the dumbest thing he could possibly do short of using his real name (though I did have to look up Reuben Kincaid)—might have had disastrous repercussions. Instead, he mostly is cool, even if his thoughts become wearisome, and the film serves as an entertaining but empty revenge saga with an admirably unorthodox conclusion that I just wasn't willing to swallow. (That's what you learned, Palmer?) Fassbender executes (get it?) what little is asked of him, would not have set the world on fire had this been his first major role. The two hours sped by and I might never have thought about the movie again, though enough of my peers love it that I'll probably wind up taking a second look. Gone Girl went from 60 to 61 (which nudged it from 3 stars to 3½, from mixed to pro), maybe that'll happen again.