“The Killer,” a new thriller starring Michael Fassbender, now playing in theatres before moving to Netflix on November 10, is a welcome return to genre filmmaking for David Fincher, director of “Se7en,” “Gone Girl” and “Zodiac.”
In the film’s first chapter the unnamed title character is holed up in a rented Parisian We Work office across the street from a ritzy hotel. There to kill a prominent man who should be checking in any day now, the Killer is a coiled snake, ready to jump into action.
When he does leave “the office,” he dresses in beige, like a “German tourist,” with no distinguishing features, (save for his Fassbender movie star good looks). He’s Mr. Nobody, unrecognized and unrecognizable.
He is there for one reason; to kill. He calls it an “Annie Oakley” job, a shot from a rifle at long distance. It’s not as exciting as some of his other gigs, like slipping poison into a person’s coffee or making the deaths look like accidents, but it pays the bills.
He lives by a considered set of rules, an existential credo for the business of death. “Forbid empathy,” he says. “Empathy is weakness.” “Anticipate, don’t improvise.” “Fight only the battle you’re paid to fight.”
He is careful, not prone to mistakes until the Paris assassination goes wrong and his bullet blows away his target’s companion, leaving the intended victim covered in gore, but very much alive.
An expert in the art of self-preservation, the Killer, through a circuitous route, under fake passports all carrying the name of old time sit com characters, beginning with Felix Unger, the meticulous half of “The Odd Couple,” eludes police. When he finally arrives at his home in the Dominican Republic, he finds his girlfriend has been assaulted, left near death in retaliation for his failed hit in Paris.
Asking himself, “WWJWBD”—”What Would John Wilkes Boothe Do?”—he jumps into action, vowing to get revenge on the people who attacked his girlfriend.
The moody, coldblooded “The Killer” is a showcase for Fassbender, who hasn’t appeared on screen in four years. From Magneto in the X-Men films to the lead in Justin Kurzel’s 2015 version of “Macbeth” and “Alien: Covenant’s” android David 8 and the corrupt MI6 agent Paul in “Haywire,” he’s played villains before, but has rarely been this nonchalantly captivating. He sucks out much of the character’s humanity, leaving behind a deadly automaton, directed by the logistics of his job rather than any sort of moral compass. Life and death, for him, is transactional and part of the film’s pleasure is waiting to see when and if he will break and allow his humanity to shine through.
But despite the movie’s hardheartedness, director Fincher, working from a script by Andrew Kevin Walker builds-in a sense of fun. Fassbender’s deliberately robotic delivery is perfect as he deadpans lines like, “The Sunshine State. Where else can you find so many likeminded individuals… outside a penitentiary?”
“The Killer” is a slickly made, stylish thriller, with an anxiety inducing score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, that uses the central character’s aloofness as a hook to pull you to the edge of your seat.
William Randolph Hearst and Orson Welles will forever be connected in our imagination courtesy of “Citizen Kane.” In the film, often regarded as one of the best ever made, Welles plays a thinly veiled version of newspaper magnate Hearst as self-absorbed, power-mad and wounded. “Mank,” a new film directed by David Fincher and streaming on Netflix on December 4, isn’t a making-of story about the film, but more the unmaking of its screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman).
Former drama critic, playwright, columnist and Algonquin Round Table wit. Mankiewicz moved to Hollywood with the promise of a contract and a career. Heading west from New York, he quickly found himself working steadily ghost-writing films. As his reputation grew, so did his bank account. “Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots,” he telegraphed to writer Ben Hecht. Known as a hard drinker and inveterate gambler, when we first meet him in “Mank,” he’s bandaged up from a recent, drunken car accident. Welles (Tom Burke) and John Houseman (Sam Troughton) have sent the writer to a ranch in the sunbaked Mojave Desert to dry out with the help of a German nurse (Monika Grossman) and a secretary (Lily Collins), and work on the script for what will become “Citizen Kane.”
At one point in the film Mankiewicz says, “You cannot capture a man’s entire life in two hours. All you can hope is to leave the impression of one.” Fincher, working from a script penned by his late father, columnist Jack, supplies a vivid snapshot of a man from a particular point of view.
Shot in luscious black and white, the story is told on a broken time line, à la “Citizen Kane,” as the action springs back and forth between the past and the present. Oldman, as Mankiewicz, staggers through the movie causing a scene at a costume dinner party at Hearst’s San Simeon estate and platonically courting his friend, movie star Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried), who also happens to be Hearst’s mistress. He’s poured into bed by his long-suffering wife (Tuppence Middleton) and goes to war with Louis B. Mayer (Arliss Howard), professionally and politically– “If I ever go to the electric chair,” he says of Mayer, “I’d like him to be sitting in my lap.”—while ignoring potentially career saving advice from his brother (Tom Pelphrey). Each vignette adds DNA to the portrait, as his disillusionment with Hollywood, politics and power grows by the moment. “Every moment of my life is treacherous,” Mank says.
Oldman plays Mankiewicz as a sharp wit who has grown tired of the world he inhabits. Drink, as his brother Joe says, has made him the “court jester” of Hollywood, a man whose genius is squandered in pursuit of booze and a sure bet at the racetrack. There’s a mischievousness to the performance that is tempered by the profound sadness of someone who sees their genius reduced to doing creative work for hire. His script for “Citizen Kane,” which was supposed to be credited solely to Welles, earned him an Oscar and may have been his last chance to speak his truth to power. “Write hard,” he says. “Aim low.”
Oldman is suitably ragged and ribald, bringing a lesser known historical figure to bawdy life but it is Seyfried who almost steals the show. As Marion Davies he is the epitome of old Hollywood glamour but behind the sequins and wide eyes is a deep well of intelligence that Seyfried slyly imbues into her character. When she and Oldman are side-by-side, the movie sings.
In many ways “Mank” echoes “Citizen Kane.” In structure, in its fragmented storytelling approach and its luscious recreation of the period but as a portrait of a man it feels lesser than. Mank is an engaging character but the depth that Kane plumbed to portray the character is missing. It succeeds as a look at power and its corrosive effects but as a character study its colorful but feels slightly under inflated.
From tiff.net: Stanley Kubrick’s critically acclaimed Full Metal Jacket was marked by a special drive-in screening of the film in 4K resolution with high dynamic range (HDR) for the first time, complemented by a pre-recorded panel, hosted by Richard Crouse, featuring stars Vincent D’Onofrio and Arliss Howard and Stanley Kubrick’s daughter Katharina Kubrick.
A surreal movie based on a short story collection by Mississippi writer Larry Brown. Arliss Howard directs and stars as Leon Barlow, a drunken writer who struggles with the demands of his ex-wife (Debra Winger), his children and his best friend (Paul LeMat). He is a failure on almost every level – certainly personally and professionally – and Howard doesn’t shy away from his protagonist’s shortcomings. The resulting film is a meandering look at the creative process, and how one man messed up his life. It’s a well crafted directorial debut from Howard who handles this quiet tale of an artist’s redemption with a firm hand.
