22 Comments

Oh my god he gave it a grade

Expand full comment

It was like John Wick if John Wick took place in a world where 99% of the universe WASN’T an assassin

Expand full comment
Nov 16, 2023·edited Nov 16, 2023

Really enjoyed this one, and hard agree on the sole action scene actually looking and sounding like it hurt. Between this and Haywire, Michael Fassbender (or at least, his stunt double) sure knows how to fly ass-first through a closet door.

Been hearing a lot of confused takes from people who watched it, though, who cannot wrap their heads around the final confrontation being sort of anti-climatic by design, where [*spoilers*] the killer intentionally lets the pharma bro who ordered the original hit live, after spending the entirety of the movie tying up loose ends. But through this lens, where being a hitman isn't altogether different from a worker surviving in the gig economy, it kind of makes sense that the killer letting the venture capitalist live is like the ultimate flex.

He got the embodiment of capitalism spooked for life, while also self-servingly acknowledging that he only gets to live out his life, of pretending that he doesn't care about the finer stuff while his house looks like that, because he's bound by the whims of the very same wealthy employers who'd lay him off in a heart beat. No practical use killing a potentially recurring customer. And hey, next time, if ever wants to actually do it, might even poison him with polonium or something, in the same way a sandwich artist gets to express himself in between orders.

Expand full comment

It’s also explained right as they start that segment of the movie, I think. Killing a billionaire would bring too much heat from the police, so I also read it as a bluff to try and scare the client from sending anyone else after him and his boo, without drawing the attention killing him would.

Expand full comment

Very insightful review of a film that is destined to be misunderstood. I thought it was a brilliant exercise in highly disciplined filmmaking that accomplished exactly what it intended. Fassbender turns in a brilliant performance grounded in interiority. A mature alternative to the noisy antics of Bourne or Bond or MI-999. There are different ways to derive pleasure from a film in this genre, and this offers a deeply satisfying kind of fun.

Expand full comment
founding

Agreed, good solid movie, happy to have classic Fincher back after the boredom of Mank. Two things:

- Since I knew she was coming, did anyone else think the lawyer's assistant was Tilda Swinton in heavy makeup for a second? I also briefly thought it was Melissa Leo in an uncredited cameo.

- COOL STORY BRO: I saw Charles Parnell (the lawyer) waiting with us for a very delayed tram to the terminal at O'Hare on Labor Day. Dude is buff, and has just as much of a chiseled face in real life. I thought he was a good omen for our flight since, ya know, Top Gun, but we were delayed 25 minutes.

Expand full comment

I’m glad you liked it, Vince. This also reminded me of Killing Them Softly. The way the killers are portrayed as hard boiled egg from a pouch eating psychos or trailer trash brutes, how they’re stuck in their own kind of corporate bureaucracy, and that it doesn’t pay as much as you’d think.

A life of international hits gets you a raised home in St Pete, a generic brutalist box deep in the DR, or a nice house and spending money at a fancy restaurant in upstate New York.

Expand full comment

Really wanted to watch this this weekend but my whole family is sick and I showed my wife the trailer and she was like, “That looks kinda rad but also the worst movie to watch while sick.” So, alas it will end up in the pile for a bit.

Random note, a friend of mine watched it and liked it but was dismayed that while he was in St. Petersburg, Florida, the killer didn’t go into a Publix to get a Pub Sub and instead went to a random Louisiana grocery store. So much for Fincher’s authenticity. Sean Baker would never!

Expand full comment

Spot on review. I would watch a sequel too, but I doubt one will come.

Expand full comment

It's an empty, derivative, shallow, and thematically confused movie that looks really cool on the surface.

Expand full comment
author

Thematically confused?? Simplistic, maybe, but i don't know how you get "confused" at all.

Expand full comment

Not to mention derivative...? The whole point is that it's specifically anti-derivative.

Expand full comment

It looks exactly like and tries to make the same points as a million "super cool, sexy hitman with super cool tools" movies that came before.

Expand full comment
author

I think he pretty clearly wasn't supposed to be cool! He was a guy misquoting Aleister Crowley eating egg mcmuffins without the bun.

Expand full comment

Then they should have cast someone other than Michael Fassbender. He and Tilda Swinton are essentially cool. Even the beast hitman was conventionally attractive.

Expand full comment

They should have cast someone like Paul Giamatti, but they didn't. That was a choice.

Expand full comment

We're meant to ignore, or not to notice, that the killer murders an innocent, brown, poor taxi driver but lets the white billionaire live? What message is that meant to communicate that works with the rest of it?

Expand full comment
author

Your basic misread was assuming we were supposed to be rooting for the hitman or that he was supposed to be aspirational or something.

Expand full comment

No, clearly that's not the case. But he was styled as cool-as-fuck, which is an aesthetic choice, and not necessary. Do you think hitpeople really look as slick and stylish as Michael Fassbender and Tilda Swinton? Do you think they're deep and philosophical? Who was this aimed at? Who is meant to get something real and meaningful out of this story? What are we meant to relate to in it? In a few sentences, what would you say the themes of this film were?

Expand full comment

Probably white privilege, the disenfranchisement of minorities, uhhh decolonization? And probably climate change I'm guessing...

Expand full comment

Ah. You're one of those.

Expand full comment

Man who in real life can get any shooting done, firearm or otherwise, with Morrissey’s loud wailing in their ears? My TV might be subpar but his voice was the loudest thing during the movie. The cutting-to-POV audio effect wouldve been cool otherwise

Expand full comment