Watched on Netflix

Being able to deal with boredom is part of the job, asserts the nameless contract killer (Michael Fassbender) at the beginning of David Fincher's "The Killer", a superficial and straightforward thriller in the best sense of the word. Superficial because, despite Fassbender's introspective, introductory voice-over, which introduces us to the methodology of his fisherman's hat-wearing killer as he aims a sniper rifle at a five-star hotel on the top floor of a Parisian skyscraper after an obligatory yoga exercise and listening to a The Smiths song, we never learn more about this man than his vocation. What we are left with is his matter-of-fact detachment and professionalism. The only one who can hold a candle to him in terms of execution (cinematic, not murderous, of course) is Fincher himself, because the American cult filmmaker proves here in congenial form that he can more than avoid boredom, namely by getting the absolute maximum of entertainment out of each of the six chapters that frame the film, each scene and each moment.

Ultimately, however, Fassbender's killer is not the great professional he thinks he is, because things don't go as planned. Before you know it, the hunter becomes the hunted and ultimately the avenger and soon we are accompanying Fassbender on a murderous campaign from Paris to the Dominican Republic and on to the US territories of New Orleans, Florida and Chicago. One almost wonders why Fincher never considered directing a James Bond film, as his geographical visuals are far more impressive than those of a postcard print. With Fincher, each new location becomes its own movie: while Fassbender has to assert himself in New Orleans in terms of home invasion and infiltrate a law firm unnoticed, things get a little rougher in Florida: in a spectacular fight scene, everything that is possible is broken in a residential building. Even in such simple scenes of chaos, it becomes clear just how important or even essential good execution is: the action in "The Killer" is not a perfectly composed dance and consciously distances itself from the usual fight ballads that John Wick and his disciples have made popular in recent years. Instead, it is finally allowed to be raw, uncontrolled and trimmed to pure affect. The balance is achieved in a New York episode with a dialog duel with Tilda Swinton, who, with her silver hair as The Expert, looks like something taken from Jim Jarmusch's hitman film "The Limits of Control".

The focus is on Fassbender, whose rigid face degenerates into a pure mask, even when he utters wonderfully absurd wisdom such as "What Would John Wilkes Booth Do?" or quotes Popeye with "I am, what I am". In other respects, his appearance is that of a classic Fincher protagonist, especially as "The Killer" generally comes across as a best-of from his filmography: Starting with the psychedelic opening credits, which evoke both "Seven" and "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", in which murder weapons flash across the screen in an aesthetically distorted manner, to the sober voice-over of a "Fight Club" and a theme that seems like an inversion of "Zodiac". However, anyone who thinks Fincher is drawing a line under his career here is mistaken, because where the typical investigator protagonists are usually desperate to unravel a mystery, in this graphic novel adaptation by Alexis "Matz" Nolent everything remains on the surface. Unlike other representatives of the silent loner in the gangster milieu genre ("Le Samourai" or "Drive"), the protagonist neither has to be deconstructed nor romanticized here. "The Killer" therefore stands in its own right as a playful one-off by a filmmaker who, after his global successes and cult films, finally feels like he can shoot freely.