The Killer (2023)

The Plot of The Killer: A professional assassin botches a contract, accidentally shooting the wrong person, and is forced to flee, arriving eventually back at his luxury Dominican pad. Once there he finds that the place has been trashed and his girlfriend left for dead. Determined that such an event can never happen again he embarks on a course of retribution, starting with the taxi driver from whom he gained the identities of the two people who had hospitalised his girlfriend before killing him. He moves on into the organisation for whom he worked making plans and killing people on the way eventually arriving at the apartment of the client who had commissioned the original hit.

Content: There is no sex or nudity, I seem to remember a bit of drinking, particularly of whiskey in a gourmet restaurant. The assassin narrates as he goes along, and once on the path of retribution makes detailed preparations for each of killings he carries out. The film may be notable more for what is left out than what it contains; no car chases, no fire fights and no sex, and very little dialogue. What it does have is a feeling of impending doom as the assassin goes about his meticulously prepared hits.

A View: This film has been well liked by the critics, but up to now has not been an earner for the studio returning to date $362,000. I enjoyed it but could not immediately determine why. Later after thinking about it, it seems to me that the fascination is in seeing the assassin making preparations, but that we cannot immediately determine what he is going to do. Typically when he decides to kill the attorney who gave him the job we see him dressed as a sanitation worker, pushing a wheelie bin in which we know is a nail gun. I leave it to you to imagine how it went.

Fun Fact: David Fincher has been involved in the project to develop a film from the graphic novel since 2007.