Wondering why you should be excited about The Killer? For the director – David Fincher. Who is the Best Director Hollywood has working currently. As a student of cinema and fellow filmmaker, I firmly believe that when it comes to helming a film there is no one better at it than Fincher. Names like Scorsese, Tarantino, Nolan, etc., are great but the expertise of Fincher is unmatched. The man has given us gems like Fight Club, Se7en, Zodiac, Gone Girl, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Social Network and one of the best TV shows ever – Mindhunter. Since Mank, Fincher has continued to produce the animated anthology series Love Death + Robots, even directing one episode (“Bad Travelling”). So, there is no reason to think that The Killer won’t be one of the best films of this decade. Let’s find out if the critics agree with me.
The Killer Reviews Roundup – Not Fincher’s Best?
The Killer has opened up to good critical reception with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 88% and an IMDb rating of 7.4/10. The general critical consensus seems to be that the film finds director David Fincher on firm footing with a stylish and engaging thriller that proves a perfect match for leading man Michael Fassbender.
Michael Phillips (Chicago Tribune) – “At heart, an elevator pitch for a two-hour pilot for a slick, junky Netflix series about a globe-trotting assassin.” Original Score: 1.5/4
Edward Douglas (Above the Line) – “Prime David Fincher, a cleverly-crafted revenge thriller that keeps you on your toes.” Original Score: B+
Sara Michelle Fetters (MovieFreak.com) – “As slight and as inconsequential as it may be, the film is still quite amusing, even if it does vanish from memory not too long after the story’s events have concluded.” Original Score: 3/4
Bill Goodykoontz (Arizona Republic) – “It’s not Fincher’s best film by any stretch, not with a resume that includes “Zodiac,” “The Social Network” and “Fight Club.” But it’s an intriguing one.” Original Score: 4/5
Wendy Ide {Observer (UK)} – “The film is in thrall to the movie mythology of the assassin and to the slick cynicism of Fincher’s own back catalogue.” Original Score: 3/5
Brent Simon (AV Club) – “It’s not fair, of course, to stack up every film against the full canon of its maker. But there certainly doesn’t feel much of substance here — no level of thematic or narrative differentiation that would stake a grander claim to its reason for being.” Original Score: C+
Richard Roeper (Chicago Sun-Times) – “David Fincher directs another thrilling sensory experience…” Original Score: 4/4
Sandra Hall (Sydney Morning Herald) – “A film that is almost as objective as the killer himself, and just as intelligent.” Original Score: 4/5
Stephen Romei (The Australian) – “It’s not as good as Se7en, Fight Club, Mank or other Fincher films such as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), The Social Network (2010) and Gone Girl (2014), but fans will appreciate this humorous walk on the noir side.” Original Score: 3.5/5
Jordan Hoffman (The Messenger) – “There’s nothing I hate more than going to a car rental dealership, and even that looks cool in this movie.” Original Score: 9/10
Peter Howell (Toronto Star) – “It occurs to me that this film, adapted from a French graphic novel and which reunites Fincher with his “Se7en” screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, is the closest thing to comedy that the director will ever do.” Original Score: 3/4
Radheyan Simonpillai (CTV’s Your Morning) – “From a filmmaker who tends to scrub the fingerprints off his own work, this is a brilliant take on how we are all disconnected and fading into anonymity doing soulless and impersonal jobs in the era of WeWork, Amazon, UberEats and streaming services.”
Kyle Smith (Wall Street Journal) – “The pretentious and the silly may consider themselves opposites, but frequently they are close companions. They certainly are in Andrew Kevin Walker’s screenplay.”
Adam Graham (Detroit News) – “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.” Original Score: A-
Danny Leigh (Financial Times) – “And the real affront is that The Killer isn’t even a terrible movie. It is worse than that. It is endlessly, grindingly competent.” Original Score: 3/5
Richard Whittaker (Austin Chronicle) – “It’s really a character study of a working-class stiff, of the kind that Raymond Carver would enjoy.” Original Score: 4/5
Bob Strauss (San Francisco Chronicle) – ““The Killer” may look like a fight for one’s life with a satisfying side of vengeance. But it’s a study of an existential death served in delectably cold and precise portions.” Original Score: 4/4
Nick Schager (The Daily Beast) – “It’s arguably the greatest expression yet of Fincher’s style and worldview—caustic, unrelenting, and wickedly funny.”
Wenlei Ma (PerthNow) – “The Killer is mesmerising in its own way. It imprisons you in the mind of an amoral assassin and lulls you into believing the ethics of murder is neither here nor there, all that matters is effectiveness.” Original Score: 3.5/5
Christy Lemire (Breakfast All Day) – “This is a blast and it does what it does so well.” Original Score: 8.7/10
The Killer will start streaming on Netflix from November 10th.
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