Script Review – ‘The Killer’ (Netflix)

The script for The Killer, written by veteran writer Andrew Kevin Walker, and based on a graphic novel, is not a script any aspiring writer should hope to emulate.

This is the very definition of a "Director’s" movie – a piece of art brought to life by a gifted filmmaker and a talented actor, working with a script that doesn’t really follow any of the basic rules of screenwriting, and as a result, holds the audience at arm’s length.

The Killer is about yet another international assassin who has built a highly successful career based on being meticulous – just ask him, his lengthy voice-over will tell you everything.

Quick aside – I firmly believe there are more assassins in movies than have ever existed in real life. At this point, they are rivaling vampires as fake characters that don’t exist in the real world, who moviemakers cannot stop obsessing about. Apart from maybe the folks at Mossad, and the people pushing Oligarchs out of windows in Russia – I do not believe there is a vibrant marketplace for weird, isolated sociopaths who murder rich people for a living in our actual world.

But let’s set that aside, and look at the character brought to life by Michael Fassbender, and Director David Fincher. He’s a murderer. But he also does yoga and sits still, looking out windows endlessly. He tells us his life philosophies in voice-over as he waits for his next target, then screws up the assignment.

So we, the audience, are introduced to a character over a lengthy and oddly compelling opening segment set in one dark room, subjected to a lot of voice-over about how he has perfected his methods, only to see him cock up the job. Which leaves us thinking what exactly about this guy?

From there, our killer ‘hero’ makes choices, and we follow him as he executes those choices – pun intended. All along he gives us more voice-over, and other characters are given lengthy monologues in front of our almost mute killer. And that’s it. That’s the movie.

Look, to be honest, it looks great and moves along…mostly. David Fincher is a master filmmaker. Michael Fassbender is a great actor who does a great job looking detached, cold-blooded, calm, and methodical while voice-over plays over his stillness.

But the script makes it almost impossible for an audience to generate any real feeling for the character on which the entire project is built.

He’s a murderer. He murders innocent people in this script. Just because. His character is inconsistent. Almost comically. Which risks leaving the audience not really caring if he lives or dies. When you build the entire film on a character we struggle to care about – it makes the project far less compelling. It’s not just that he’s a murderer, and I have some sort of issue with dark characters being interesting. It’s more that this particular killer never really gives us any reason to understand him and his decisions, or give us any reason to feel connected, or involved in his choices. We’re left watching a dude in a series of hats with a series of silly fake names drive a series of boring cars in a series of countries and kill a series of people, some of whom really didn’t deserve it. So why are we here again? What’s in this for us?

Apart from a well-staged fight scene, our killer faces no obstacles, and after all the character build-up, we watch him make decisions that defy everything we know about him, for no apparent reason.

This is purely a finely polished character study about a character who is essentially dull. Existing on the fringes. Somewhat unfeeling, and yet also has feelings. I’m sure the filmmakers would call that ‘complex.’ Which would be fine if there was any hint of an emotional journey underpinning this character study. As in, we, the audience, watch this character evolve, learn, grow, change, be impacted by the events that occur in the time we spend with him. None of that occurs in this script. He burns bridges – but all because he wants to, and with relative ease. That’s not really drama.

So by all means, enjoy watching The Killer – as a David Fincher fan. But please don’t write scripts like this. Hanging an entire audience experience on a made-up character who learns no lessons even after screwing up his job, seems devoid of emotional growth or most human emotions, apart from when the script decides he has them, and then proceeds to achieve exactly what he wanted to achieve with no serious obstacles is not recommended.

This is a simple, forgettable script that could’ve been so much more with a little more thought about the audience's perspective and a little less thought about what hat he should be wearing or the boring car he should be driving.

And please…please…can we slow down on the assassin movies? The character is played out. Unless you want to make an assassin, vampire, superhero movie.

Dare I say it – but we are now living in an era where a once mighty big screen film director is making "made for TV" movies. What a time to be alive.