There’s a hole in the cinematic landscape, one that only a David Fincher story about murderous misanthropes can fill. It’s been almost a decade since Fincher’s last feature film thriller, and he’s been plenty busy — his work on Mindhunter and Mank was irresistible — but the director of Gone Girl and Zodiac is returning to the genre that made him a household name.
In a propulsive new trailer for The Killer, we get a glimpse at the titular assassin’s many disguises, routines, and methods of mayhem. “If I’m effective, it’s because of one simple fact,” he coolly narrates. “I. Don’t. Give. A. F---.” You can find out more about The Killer below. But not too much. You wouldn’t want him to track you down.
After a fateful near-miss, an assassin battles his employers, and himself, on an international manhunt he insists isn’t personal.
The Killer is a paid assassin who wields his sniper rifle to the beat of The Smiths. Despite his precision — and his motto to “stick to your plan, anticipate, don’t improvise” — he makes an error that sets off an unpredictable chain of events.
Fassbender has been nominated for two Academy Awards, four BAFTA Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards. The incredibly versatile actor has portrayed a range of characters, from a German-speaking British spy in Inglourious Basterds, to the founder of Apple in the drama Steve Jobs. In 2011, he joined the X-Men universe as Magneto, appearing in X-Men: First Class, X-Men: Days of Futures Past, X-Men: Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix. Fassbender also has a longstanding collaboration with director Steve McQueen, which has yielded searing performances in Shame, Hunger, and 12 Years a Slave.
“Fassbender has got moves,” Fincher told Netflix about casting the actor as his stealthy protagonist. “He’s emotionally and intellectually effervescent. But if you ask him, ‘Turn all that off,’ he can do that too. And you’re left with a vacuum at the center of everything. It’s a powerful skill set.”
Shame, Prometheus, Steve Jobs, X-Men: First Class, 300, Inglourious Basterds, Band of Brothers, Hunger, Fish Tank, 12 Years a Slave
The Lawyer runs a ring of assassins out of his law office in New Orleans. He’s calculated in his advice to The Killer.
“I thought he had an interesting combination of succinct and manipulative,” Fincher said of Parnell, recently seen in Top Gun: Maverick, and Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One. “I loved his verbal dexterity.”
Top Gun: Maverick, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, Transformers: Age of Extinction, Barry, The Mandalorian, The Last Ship, Briarpatch
The Client is a billionaire who lives in Chicago. His primary concern is protecting his bottom line.
Howard and Fincher reunited for The Killer after previously collaborating on Mank in 2020.
Full Metal Jacket, The Time Traveler's Wife, Moneyball, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Manhunt, True Blood, Rubicon, Mank
The Expert enjoys the finer things in life, and understands The Killer’s code and motivations, though she also has a moral compass of her own.
Indie movies, blockbusters, superhero epics — Swinton's done them all. She is an Academy Award winner, as well as a British Academy of Film and Television Arts winner, who has also been nominated for three Golden Globes. Swinton and Fincher reunited on The Killer after previously working together on 2008’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
We Need to Talk About Kevin, Suspiria, Snowpiercer, Michael Clayton, Asteroid City, Three Thousand Years of Longing, The Dead Don’t Die, Okja, The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Brute is an adrenaline-drenched, Florida-based hitman who lives up to his name.
A stuntman and actor from New Zealand, Baker and his daredevil feats can be seen in a variety of movies and TV shows, including the physical incarnation of Sauron in The Lord of the Rings. Baker described The Brute as “just a normal human being, going through the same things everyone else does. But perceived as a monster.”
Bullet Train, Deadpool 2, The Mandalorian, The Lord of the Rings
Dolores is The Lawyer’s nervous secretary, and one of the film’s most morally ambiguous characters.
“If you facilitate something that you know is wrong, are you doing something wrong?” Fincher asks of the ethically shady Dolores. “Obviously, the answer has to be ‘yes,’ but I loved watching her balance fear and her own culpability, or moral responsibility.”
O’Malley is a character actor who has played a rich variety of roles in film, theater and TV, from NYPD Blue to Boardwalk Empire.
NYPD Blue, Boardwalk Empire, Why Women Kill, Sami, Snowpiercer, Annabelle: Creation, Strange Angel, Shameless
Magdala is The Killer’s romantic partner. Her loyalty runs so deep that she refuses to give up any information about him — even when her own safety is on the line.
Dark Days, Malhação, All The Flowers
The Killer is drawn from writer Alexis “Matz” Nolent and artist Luc Jacamon’s 1998 graphic novel. Andrew Kevin Walker, who last collaborated with Fincher on their breakout hit Se7en, wrote the film’s screenplay.
For costume designer Cate Adams, The Killer was a tricky needle to thread: memorable enough to make an impression on audiences, but not so memorable he’d stand out to potential witnesses. In the film, Fassbender’s assassin lays out his own personal urban-camouflage style guide early on: “My camo is based on a German tourist I saw in London a while back. No one really wants to interact with a German tourist.” It’s a line that made it into the script later, but Fincher gave it to the crew as a design philosophy almost immediately. The one thing he did not want was glamour.
“The very first meeting I had with him I showed pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio [in Blood Diamond], John Krasinski in Jack Ryan,” Adams says. “I showed them to David and he was like, ‘No, that’s definitely not it.’ He was very patient.” Fincher was looking for accessibility and disposability — “clothing that was easy to find from an airport or somewhere on the street. Wherever he was traveling, he would be able to find something easy to carry,” Adams tells us. The director wanted “like a lazy people style: zippers, Velcro, maybe something that’s a pullover.” As with his victims, the Killer would prefer to dispose of any unwanted article of clothing as quickly as possible.
Of course, part of the fun of The Killer is watching the supposedly taciturn and professional assassin contradict his own philosophy at every turn. Clothing is no exception. Case in point: the man does not discard his bucket hats. Or, if he does, he has a healthy supply of replacements. The costume design department can relate. “There was always a bucket hat,” Adams laughs. “We went through every bucket hat on the planet. I tried to find a nylon and water-resistant fabric in that really light color, but I just could not find it anywhere.”
Finally, one of the film’s costume shoppers found the perfect hat in an army surplus store — a Rollup Hat designed by Broner. “It comes in boxes of 30, small, medium, large, extra large,” Adams says. “So then we ordered a million from the company and had tons of them while we were shooting in every location when we needed them.” A Killer’s dream come true.
For all his coldhearted pronouncements, the Killer has an iPod full of songs by the quintessentially sensitive, mopey, introspective English rock band the Smiths. “That was very much a Fincher thing,” screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker tells Tudum of The Killer’s Smiths-laden soundtrack. “There was one variation where it was all just ’80s music throughout. Eventually [we] hit upon the playlist of the Smiths, and it couldn’t be more genius, in my opinion. It’s so appropriate for him, and it works on so many different levels.”
Here’s every song by the Smiths that appears in The Killer.
“Well I Wonder”
“I Know It’s Over”
“How Soon Is Now?”
“Hand in Glove”
“Bigmouth Strikes Again”
“Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”
“Girlfriend in a Coma”
“Shoplifters of the World Unite”
“Unhappy Birthday”
“This Charming Man”
“There Is a Light That Never Goes Out”
Yes. Near the end of The Killer, Fassbender faces off with a fellow professional, played by Tilda Swinton. “Stone’s throw from a city that never sleeps, barely off the beaten path,” the Killer narrates. “What are you doing, living amongst the normies?”
In the film, Swinton and the “normies” in question live in Beacon, NY, a Hudson Valley town about two hours north of New York City. But the sequence was actually filmed in St. Charles, a suburb of Chicago; the town’s historic Hotel Baker stands in for the restaurant where the Expert shares a tense drink with an assassin. Hopefully, most meals enjoyed by the hotel’s patrons are a bit less stressful.
The Killer is now streaming on Netflix. Better keep a sharp eye out for him.
