I absolutely promise not to waste your time… | The Killer (2023) Movie Review
A Lesser Fincher is still a masterpiece 🖼️
I LiveSky film reviews over on BlueSky, and then piece them together with commentary to make my full reviews here on Medium before they go to Letterbox’d. Please subscribe anywhere/everywhere you can for more of my shenanigans…
I’ve been on a bit of a kick lately about feature-film length (see: The Damned, Zack Snyder’s Justice League), and after suffering through ZSJL over five, torturous days, I was ready for something I knew was not going to waste my time. And if I know David Fincher (and I’d like to think that I do, a little), 2023’s The Killer on Netflix, which I somehow missed until now, was not going to waste my time.
Clocking in at a tight 118 minutes, this film is — no offense to a fine company that moved fast and broke the film and home-video industries — too good for Netflix. Way too good.
Reviewers are supposed to build a little tension, do a little razzle-dazzle to keep you scrolling for the definitive ‘do I recommend it,’ by talking about shot composition and contextual industry drama or whatever.
Fuck that. I’m not going to waste your time, either.
This film is excellent, and the fact that it earned a paltry (and, to be fair, symbolic) reported $452,208 at the box-office in a hyper-limited honorary release frankly makes me sad.
I feel a little better knowing that it kind of low-key crushed on Netflix, and probably exposed a lot of people to Fincher for the first time, which was no doubt part of the calculus for him and his team.
There was some development-hell stuff, it doesn’t seem all that atypical, and ultimately, the Netflix pivot seems to be definitive for Fincher, who’s like… all-in on streaming and specifically Netflix as the ‘future of cinema’ etc. etc.
I dunno, but I’d bet that David Fincher is a lot smarter and more in-tune with the fluctuations in this industry, but I also think it’s as fundamentally unpredictable as the stock market (taste being arguably more unpredictable, in an infinity-times-infinity sense), and the guys who were right will claim they were right all along, after the fact. And they will have been. It doesn’t mean they have, like, prophetic foresight, though that’s often the narrative they try to build.
I’m honestly actually complaining about Elon Musk, and from what I can tell, David Fincher couldn’t be less like Elon Musk, so that’s very unfair to Fincher.
I have no clue if what he’s doing is ‘right’ for his movies, but he thinks it is, and that’s great, and lots of people are seeing them. Maybe those of us who are sad about it (I am a little!) can hold screenings in our local theatre chains or something. It’s not his problem that we can’t get physical media of his work, and to be fair again, all creative projects have historically been pretty ephemeral over the long run. Who am I to say?
There’s also people who can’t afford another streamer, or to even think about paying for another streamer or any streamer, and things seem to be getting worse for them, not better. So I guess Cinema is bread and circuses, but it’s a shame for those who can’t even realistically get into the circus to get any of the bread.
So it goes.
By the way, if you’re wondering why so much of my movie review of David Fincher’s film The Killer is devoted to (seemingly) so much that is not David Fincher’s film The Killer, I would say to you that this thing came out in 2023, and I’m thinking lots of thoughts about lots of other things at the moment.
Like the former-CBS meteorologist who lost her job for (blech, sorry for linking to the New York Post, but they have the most concise breakdown of the pertinent facts) what I would call unimpeachable conduct and, frankly, good journalism. It has some fucks, sure, but maybe for too long, we haven’t given any, and therefore a few are now called for. Even and especially in legitimate, good journalism.
This shit is fucking serious.
CBS? Is not. Not about journalism or principles.
It legendarily once was, the hallowed home of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, but times change, people die and corporations only evolve in one, single way.
It’s true of every big media organization or — frankly — every big-enough organization/corporation. The only stance they take is that they don’t have a stance at all, unless it’s actuarially confirmed to be the more-profitable stance and there are dollars to be wrung from denouncing the ‘bad’ side. Then they have a stance. Obviously.
Here’s a wakeup call to fellow lefties: if it’s just fine to be a visible, public Nazi sympathizer (and Elon Musk definitively gave a Nazi-informed, fascist salute of ‘I see you, and you see me, too’ and then if you had ANY doubt whatsoever, you blind idiot, he did it again so the folks behind him didn’t miss the obvious point he was making; there, I wanted to be on the record with that very obvious, no-fucking-shit take that SO many news outlets have been too cowardly or craven to be seen to have), then it might well be more profitable than these soulless, literally-designed-only-to-maximize-profit-and-revenue machines have previously calculated.
Do you want to live in that world? No, honestly. Do you?
So here I am writing, kind of for myself, though to some extent I’m beholden to my medium Medium (I find them to be very tolerable corporate overlords; not just saying that because this is on their platform).
It’s a far cry from working for Hearst, though, which I used to do when I covered (mostly high-school and college) sports for the local-news division of the Houston Chronicle, which I did until I left (in a huff — and with some justification, I would argue) not long after the 2016 election. I have a vivid memory of Election Night, covering a high school girls’ volleyball first-round state playoff tournament, and as news about the election trickled out over the arena’s PA system and on Twitter and Facebook, and the way the exuberance and joy and bubbly, infectious, spirited energy of the opening matches gave way to a stark, shocked, defeated silence punctuated only by the sharp squeaks of sneakers on the hardwood. Why and how I quit after that (a pretty non-ideological compensation thing, I’m sad to say; I’d have loved to have died on a better hill) isn’t the point, because that was a watershed moment for me.
And to be honest, if I’d still been with Hearst on Inauguration Day, I’d have posted all the BlueSky stuff I posted, and I’d have even posted something from a Chron-based account, like the sort I used to have access to. Something definitively stating that yes, you saw what you saw. I saw it, too. It’s not okay. I can’t stop it. Neither can you, probably. And maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe he’s the symptom, not the disease (though as the world’s richest [and dumbest] man, he does have a disproportionate and scary impact on all of the rest of us), and what we need to fix or stop or resist is closer to us down here than the end result of it, which is playing out on the international stage, though only in front of a very-carefully-culled cadre of insiders (how Soviet, or even modern Russian — certainly dictatorial — are the optics of that?!).
And I would have done that because it would have been my job. In the same way that when Chron re-assigned all reporters during Hurricane Harvey or after city-wide storm damage, sometimes as a reporter or journalist, your job becomes bigger than your beat. And if no one else is able or willing to make the right call, then a journalist’s job is to do that. I think a lot of people in this country had the natural question, ‘Did I really see what I just think I saw?’ and Job One of The Fourth Estate — and Job Only in times like these — is to confirm for those that ask those questions, ‘you saw what you saw, and it meant what you think it meant.’ Asking questions is the luxury and prerogative of the laypeople. Answering them is the purview of journalists everywhere.
What exactly should happen next?
I don’t know. I frankly don’t know that, at all. If you do, please tell me. I’m happy to be led, in large part because I don’t feel (aside from a handful of human beings like Sens. Bernie Sanders & Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) that anyone in charge is operating in good faith or offering effective leadership.
What I do know is — stay with me — The Killer is a lesser Fincher masterpiece.
Did I land the transition back?
Probably not.
That’s okay. I have only about that much ability to concentrate on what I see to be the desperation or direness of our current national and political situation (a lot of you overseas are fucked, too, and I sympathize with those living under aspiring or actual dictators anywhere in the world, or frankly universe, if it happens elsewhere) before I have to return in my thoughts to happier, simpler, better things.
Like David Fincher’s The Killer. Adapted from a graphic novel (couldn’t have guessed it; it’s allegedly a faithful adaptation, but it stands fully on its own as a complex and substantive work), no frame of this thing is wasted, and the script is so drily hilarious that for the first third of the film, I felt it was akin to American Psycho, my favorite film of all time (so I’m always looking for the next one), in being a fully-satirical, comedic endeavor.
I think not, though.
I think Fincher, et al. (especially screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, who also wrote Se7en and cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt, who deserve especial laudits) would not classify this as a comedy, but it is funny.
Whatever this film sets out to do, it does well. I saw parallels to Wolf Man (2025) (though The Killer is probably a better film, I did give both 5-stars on Letterbox’d, which I’d like to think is kinda special) in that, rather than getting bogged down in the tropes of their genres, they tackle them and wrestle and subvert them into something fascinating to watch, and something that feels fresh or new.
I’d liken it to the experience I had watching The Bourne Identity (as a junior in high school, working at a Blockbuster, if you were wondering precisely what age I am), which was, ‘Whoa, this is really different than what I’m used to…’
And I like that experience! And it’s a fun experience to have with a filmmaker like David Fincher, whom I’m fairly familiar with, but who definitely has not ceased to surprise me, even if I wish maybe he weren’t so gung-ho aligned with Netflix, going forward. I’ve not written about it, but I generally think Netflix’s ‘success’ is unsustainable, an Enron-style confidence scheme that is bound to either come crashing down catastrophically or take over the whole world, which is the only end goal — not even end goal, end condition — of publicly-traded, for-profit corporations.
I think Fincher understands the assignment, to an extent. I don’t sense quite the legendary level of substance or care in this film that I see in more than a few of his other films, but far be it from me to suggest he was giving 85%, and if I were to suggest that, I’d also say that Fincher at 85% is better than almost any other living filmmaker on their absolute best day.
To be clear, I didn’t suggest any of that.
My subtitular reference is my position (see? If you’re still here, it’s not because I wasted your time): this is a lesser Fincher masterpiece. It’s no Se7en or Zodiac.
But why would it need to be? It’s an absolute master of his craft (who, not for nothing, the people who work for him have nothing but nice things to say about, despite his notoriously exacting and deliberate nature) paired with terrific support in script and cinematography, employing a handful of best-in-class actors who turned in terrific performances. My compulsive need to rank (and for the attention that ranking brings) isn’t Fincher’s problem.
If you’re pondering, “should I see this film?” you probably should. If you’re the type to ask that question and be curious, I think you’ll find this film rewards you in every way you could want, even if it ultimately isn’t another American Psycho or Se7en.
But I’d also encourage you, after it’s over, maybe, to think about the situation we’re all facing and determine where, exactly, you stand and what you’re willing to do to defend and protect your values.
Consider from what sources you’re getting your information, and cui bono, who benefits from your clicks and how? If there ever were an age of Trust, but Verify, it’s over. Trust no one unless and until they’ve proven themselves trustworthy.
We’re not safe from the sort of horrific, unimaginable evil that swept across the world for 12 years and was only (maybe barely? there was enormous support for eugenics and the Nazi party IN America prior to World War II — that could have gone way differently, as in, which side we were on when we entered the war) ended, temporarily it now seems, 80 years ago.
We’re not safe from it, and we shouldn’t feel safe from it. What is right and good to do to defend it is a decision for every person to make for themselves, but I think all of us would be unwise to not prepare to defend our rights and fight for, and on behalf of, our beliefs.
And if he cares, I’m sorry to Mr. Fincher for spending so much of the review of his film on things other than his film.
If he asks, tell him I said it’s Elon Musk’s fault.
