Michael Fassbender has been away. With his work forever popping up on “content suppliers”, you could easily have not twigged that the Irish actor has appeared in only one film since the end of 2017. And that was the (let’s be kind) unmemorable X-Men: Dark Phoenix. He’s not at Venice film festival either. It’s early September and David Fincher’s The Killer, a steely thriller with a sly, comic undertone, has just premiered to largely positive responses. It’s the director’s “most uncomplicatedly entertaining film of the current century”, according to The Irish Times’ first-look review. Fassbender would be on the Lido, but the Hollywood actors’ strike allows no such promotional jaunts.
Fincher is able to be here, however. He notes that his star’s parallel career as a racing driver – Fassbender competes in the European Le Mans Series for the Proton Competition team – has edged him away from film work.
“I don’t see it as a comeback for him,” he tells the media. “As far as I’m concerned, he hasn’t been around much because he has a whole other career. We had to slot this movie into his driving. So, no, we felt lucky to get him. We wanted him, and had we not been able to fit into his window between racing seasons, we probably wouldn’t have made the movie.”
Adapted from a French comic by Alexis “Matz” Nolent, The Killer concerns the doings of a monomaniacal assassin whose name we never learn. Every second of his life is planned. Every aspect of his commission is honed. As he works we hear him intone advice in the style of a more-than-usually-sinister self-help manual. The material suits Fincher’s icy sensibility perfectly. The director of Se7en, Fight Club and Zodiac is known for his perfectionist approach.
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“If there’s any similarity between film-making and being a professional assassin it’s that stakes are high, it involves technology and you get your chance to record it and to have it ... or not,” he says.
It is worth noting that Fincher delivers this line in flatly comic fashion. The blistering heat has done little to restrain his apparent good mood. Why would he not be happy? Although The Killer is probably not an “awards movie” – unlike his overly worthy Mank, from 2020 – it allows the director to exercise his considerable talents as an orchestrator of glossy violence. And it allows him to have fun. Who would have expected such a sleek movie to rely so heavily on the music of The Smiths? Our protagonist listens to nothing but the Mancunian miserablists.
“The Smiths were a sort of a post-production addition,” Fincher says. “I knew I wanted to use How Soon Is Now, and I knew and I loved the idea of that song specifically as a tool for assuaging his anxieties. I liked it as a meditation tape. I thought it was amusing and funny. And I don’t think that there’s a library of music by recording artists that has that sardonic nature – and wit simultaneously. We don’t get an awful lot of access to who this guy is. I thought it would be amusing if his mixtape was our way in.”
Anyway, back to Fassbender. It is, amazingly, well over 20 years since we spotted him among the cast of the TV series Band of Brothers. His astonishing performance as a version of Bobby Sands in Steve McQueen’s Hunger established the Kerry man – born in Germany but raised in Killarney – as one of the best among his generation.
Further brilliance manifested itself in Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method and McQueen’s Shame. The Killer might, however, be the best we’ve seen in him in a straight-up (well, fairly straight-up) genre entertainment. He came close in Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire, but that film always felt a little like a high-concept lark.
“I think, obviously, his skill set is excellent,” Fincher says. “He can do things that are big. But we’ve also seen him play a robot where he does almost nothing. Most of what we know about this guy is how he moves through a very limited world. And a very insulated world, even if it’s tangential to our own. But, as an instrument, [Fassbender] can give you any colour that the moment necessitates.”
Fincher feels that nobody else could do quite what Fassbender does. He has been planning the adaptation for close to 15 years, and, when it came around again a few years ago, the director immediately “locked on to” him.
“As we were shooting, one of the things I became aware of is this strange hybrid,” he says. “His face is this perfect amalgam of Charlton Heston and Laurence Olivier. That’s the gamut ... It can be very, very elegant. Haywire was some of the influence to me. I remember seeing that movie multiple times and thinking how he was so watchable.”
The Killer is very deft in its handling of its protagonist. He is attractive. He is suave. But his sociopathy is too pronounced for us to admit to something so persuasive as charm. His repeated mantras press home a lack of connection with everyday humanity. The job is life. Life is the job. Yet the job is also death. “Stick to the plan. Anticipate, don’t improvise. Forbid empathy,” the Killer repeats to himself. Do that and you will succeed. The film reaches its crisis when a hit goes wrong and the plan no longer seems relevant. Suddenly, he is adrift like the rest of us.
“It feels like the schism between his mantra – the words that he lives by – and the behaviour he is forced to adjust is ultimately where the movie exists, where the character exists,” Fincher explains. “We wanted to be very, very rigorous and formal about certain compositions, especially as his voiceover is confident, and as his voiceover is assured, and as his voiceover is telling us exactly what it is he thinks he’s going to do. The moment that disappears the style of the cinematography changes.”
A fair bit of research looks to have gone into the film. You could mount an international revenge plot from the peripheral information provided by The Killer. Or could you? Maybe this stuff is all made up. Fincher remembers a conversation with his writer about a scene in which Fassbender has to break into the apartment of a character played by Arliss Howard. Listen and quiver.
“Originally there were two or three pages on how Fassbender was going to relieve Arliss of the key to get into his apartment,” Fincher says. “And I remember calling Andy and saying, ‘Wouldn’t he just have a [key] fob copier?’ He said, ‘If that existed ... Nobody would ever ... I mean, your hotel room ...’ I said, ‘Just do a Google search and let me know.’ Eleven seconds later he sent me this Amazon page that had 15 fob copiers all under $29. And they will send them to the Marriott you’re staying in! That idea, although irreverent, is also terrifying.”
Fincher really does seem to be enjoying himself. In the aftermath of the conference, social media tries to make something of his comment on the Hollywood writers’ strike. But, as film-makers and producer, he was just doing his best to be conciliatory.
“This movie was made during the pandemic,” he says. “I never want to make a movie through a visor again. But, having said that, we just got done with three years of having to set our brushes down and walk away. The idea of that continuing on, especially now, is very sad to me. I think I can understand both sides. And I think all we can do is encourage them to talk.”
He clearly loves to work. And he enjoys turning mayhem into entertainment. Did we mention this film is funny?
“If you’re talking about really heinous violence it’s always good to have a little bit of humour in there,” he says.
The Three Stooges would agree.
The Killer is in cinemas from Friday, October 27th, and available to stream on Netflix from Friday, November 10th
