David Fincher has made a film about a hitman who believes in nothing and says so at considerable length. The Smiths play on the soundtrack. Michael Fassbender is in every scene. The Killer is, on its surface, a fairly conventional entry in the professional-assassin genre — a job goes wrong, retribution follows, the professional must eliminate the people who sent someone after him. But Fincher is not interested in the genre. He is interested in the psychology of a man who has systematised his violence into a philosophy and then watches, with cool detachment, as the philosophy fails him.
The film's first act is extraordinary. The hitman waits, in a vacant Parisian office, for a target who is late. He narrates his own mental disciplines — no improvising, no emotion, no conscience — and Fincher shoots the waiting with a precision that mirrors the character's worldview. It is hypnotic. It is also, gradually, funny. The narration becomes unreliable; the disciplines are violated almost immediately; the professional turns out to be, beneath his protocols, thoroughly human.
Tilda Swinton, in a single scene, gives a performance of such controlled malevolence that you spend the rest of the film wishing she had more screen time. Fassbender is, throughout, excellent — doing more with less than almost any actor working today.
The film does not reach the heights of Fincher's best work. But his worst is still better than most.