Can the most immoral of acts (or the fifth most harmful if we pay attention to the top 10 of the Commandments) respond to the strictest work ethic? The answer, if we pay attention to David Fincher, is if. And, of course, that is quite disturbing. And she even disheartens. The director returns to what some define as his essence and his breathing becomes an accessory act. She is precise to the point of exhaustion, brilliant with every step she takes, ‘The killer’ It moves across the screen like destiny itself, that of the protagonist and that of any of us. Relentless. And in reality, the film is nothing more than a fable (far-fetched, but a fable nonetheless) about the distance between reality and desire; between each of our plans and all our disappointments.
Based on the graphic novel by Alexis Nolent (aka Matz) and Luc Jacamon, and scripted by Andrew Kevin Walker (head of Totem Seven), the story follows the steps of a man convicted of a fatal mistake. Michael Fassbender brings to life the hitman of the title who one bad day, due to nothing more than chance, makes a mistake. Immediately afterwards, life itself or the organization (so to speak) takes matters into its own hands and the clock starts ticking (or unfold better).
Fincher’s proposal returns the audience to the, so to speak, more orthodox Fincher. After ‘Lack‘, a film so intensely personal that it ended up as a universal work, the man who in 1999 put the ‘thriller‘ backwards with ‘Fight club’ He insists on his conception of cinema as a surgical intervention. In reality, the film is not just the chronicle of revenge, it is a patterned, exquisite and sickeningly precise mechanism for measuring and even giving meaning to time. In addition to a murky reflection on work ethics. As it is.
In this way, the man determined to track down what goes on in the minds of serial killers since before ‘Zodiac‘ a ‘Mindhunter‘until we reach it’Seven‘, back and forth, now stops at what appears in the diary of a risky profession. And what appears there is scary. The great rigor, the capacity for resilience (whatever this is), the concentration and, as has already been said, the ethical talent that the most immoral of professions needs, is frightening.
“Follow the plan… Don’t improvise, anticipate… Don’t get carried away by emotions…”. Fassbender’s character repeats the rules to stay alive over and over again. Rules, by the way, that are impossible to comply with. And it is there, in the contradiction between what is heard and what is seen, between what is desirable and what cannot be renounced, where it becomes strong. The killer (The killer), a film determined to redefine the very meaning of time. What counts, we said, is the accuracy of the metronome, the virtuosity with which the tape compresses and expands the movement of the clock hands. They all hurt, but the last one, you know, kills. And a lot.