It isn’t personal. It’s never personal. Personal compromises the job … and for an assassin, that means death. Our protagonist has many rules for the job. Mostly they come down to focus. Keep your head on the job at hand. Everything – your walk, your look, your residence, your exercise, your habits, your diet, etc. is about the job at hand. The details matter. Your feelings about any given mark are subordinate; you shouldn’t have any at all, in fact. “Empathy is weakness; weakness is vulnerability.” We get the feeling The Killer (Michael Fassbender) is very good at his job.
Our protagonist is unnamed. Accident? Not even remotely. We study him for an entire movie. We know where he lives and how he lives when he’s not killing, but -to tell the truth- for all we learn, we don’t really know anything about him, including his name. Oh, he travels a bunch, so we see his passport names, which are hilarious. See if you can place the travel aliases he uses (linked if you’re confused): Felix Unger, Howard Cunningham, Oscar Madison, Lou Grant, George Jefferson, Archibald Bunker. We know he likes The Smiths. Scratch that. We know he listens to The Smiths to help him concentrate on a job.
The Smiths are, of course, the most depressing band I can name. This seems somehow fitting.
On the day in question, The Killer fails. A sex worker accidentally intercepts the bullet meant for the target. At this point, The Killer is screwed. It’s funny. The protocol is still the same: he expected chaos; he expected covert departure; he expected having to scatter potential evidence and weaponry. Nothing about getting out of Paris is any different than what he pictured. However, since he failed to hit the target, now he’s a target. And he has to go to great lengths to stop being a target.
He‘s not a hero, but the film treats him like a hero. We see everything from the perspective of The Killer. We care about his plight. I’m not sure we know why. Perhaps part of us believes the targets are all worthy. Certainly 
the people hired to kill him are no better morally, nor are the people who employ them. But what about the secretarial lady? Surely he can spare her, right? Perhaps it comes down to professionalism; we want to see The Killer succeed because of the work he puts into his job. We see him do the research, put in the effort. Of course, we want him to succeed, right? Right?
For a protagonist as humorless as the wake of 9/11, the film itself is not without humor. When in doubt, The Killer promotes a personal tagline: “WWJWBD?” (What would John Wilkes Booth do?) That is objectively hilarious. I’m not sure any sane American has ever revered the ethos of John Wilkes Booth.
For an anti-hero, The Killer is one of the best protagonists of the year. I’m not sure if that’s good news or bad news, but Michael Fassbender comes off much better as a stone-cold killer than he did as a sympathetic soccer coach. I won’t call The Killer brilliant, but it is certainly an entertaining watch. David Fincher continues to make entertaining films no matter how much he’s kneecapped by the moral vacuum of his protagonist.
There once was a professional killer
Whose life took a turn towards a thriller
For he botched a hit
And now it’s all shit
Cuz he leaves a scene not unlike Godziller
Rated R, 118 Minutes
Director: David Fincher
Writer: Alexis Nolent, Luc Jacamon, Andrew Kevin Walker
Genre: Cold-blooded
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Assassins, I imagine
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Marks
