The Killer
released 2023
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“The Killer” is an American, action, suspense, thriller produced by Cean Chaffin, William Doyle, Peter Mavromates and Alexandra Milchan. It was directed by David Fincher and written by Alexis Nolent, Luc Jacamon and Andrew Kevin Walker. It stars Michael Fassbender, Tida Swinton, Charles Parnell, Arliss Howard, Kerry O’Malley, Sophie Charlotte, Emiliano Pernia, Gabriel Polanco, Sala Baker, Endre Hules, Bernard Bygott, Monique Ganderton, Daran Norris, Nikki Dixon, Paloma Palacio Colon, Lia Lockhart, Leroy Edwards III, Jack Kesy, Kev Morris Sr., Elisha Davis, Suzette Lange, Amber Martinez and many more.

The Killer IMDb webpage

“The Killer” is the story of a professional and very capable assassin whose name is never revealed, played by Michael Fassbender. As is the case in so many of these types of movies the killer lives a quiet life in luxury always keeping a low profile. The story begins where he is on a “job” in Paris. He states that so much of a days work for him is waiting for the right time when all the items of his check list for a successful mission are checked off. He goes over them over and over again and up until now he has never failed. Just to make things clearer the Killer lives in a world of corporate and governmental crimes and assassinations where he never meets who pushes the GO button on a mission, so to speak.

The story starts where the Killer is in an empty space of a building directly across the street from his target. He is watching a man that he is supposed to kill. He watches as the man goes from room to room and eventually is visited by a woman he starts to get intimate with. The woman is beautiful and is scantily clad. His eyes fall on the woman as he recites his rules of the job to keep himself focused. He knows that he is distracted but he takes the shot anyway and misses the man. Instead he hits the woman as she closes the curtains and everything goes to pot for him from there. He is forced to flee the scene and bear the consequences of a failed job. His only failed job.

This is as much the story of a man caught in a world of his own making as it is the story of a man walking on a tightrope with the abyss waiting to swallow him underneath him. We never find out the circumstances around his job choice in life or what it’s really like to murder people then go home and sleep soundly without any kind of conscience. We can only guess.

There is an action on the part of the Killer at the end of the story that I really liked. It made him a much more relatable character for us, the viewer. I won’t give away spoilers but suffice it to say that he surprised us with an unexpected act which revealed that he is not a homicidal or sadistic person. I liked that about him.

One criticism I have for the story is that such a story would have a part 2 because the people who would come after him would not stop. This would not be a fairy tale with a happy ending in the real world.

One chilling element in all these types of murder for hire, serial killer movies is the fact that once a killer has a person in their crosshairs that person’s life is done. There is little they can do about it. These murder stories all have this very sinister underbelly that is not often mentioned.

John Ink2Quill

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