We all have bad days.
If I have a rough day at the office, for instance, you might go to a movie and hear a couple of extra swear words I didn’t catch. If a postal carrier doesn’t get enough sleep one night, you might get someone else’s mail the next morning. If a surgeon has an off day, why, someone might die.
But if an assassin messes up an assignment? Well, someone just might live. A killer’s bad day just might be a pretty good day for his mark, all things considered.
The Killer—we don’t know his real name—had a pretty bad day at the office. And by day, I mean night. And by office, I mean an abandoned one across the street from a posh Paris hotel.
Oh, he killed someone all right—just not the right someone. He had the French politician literally lined up in his sights when the man’s hired dominatrix danced right in front of the Killer’s speeding bullet. Just like that, the Killer’s unblemished (but very bloody) record went kaput.
If only it ended there. When you’re in the Killer’s line of work, a botched assignment might mean more than a glower from your boss or a sternly written letter in your permanent file. Nope, your bad day could snowball into a much worse day … for your loved ones.
The Killer doesn’t have a lot of loved ones to worry about. Just one, in fact. But when he heads home, he finds Magdala, that one-and-only loved one, missing and his house in bloody shambles. He soon relocates his girlfriend in a local hospital—the bloodied, battered victim of a horrific assault.
“They came for you,” Magdala’s brother tells the Killer.
Well. Is that the thanks he gets after all his successful hits? Are his employers trying to terminate him without even a cursory visit from human resources? And why drag his loved ones into his work performance issue? No, that’s not right. Not right at all.
Fire him? Fine. But to invade his house and attack his girlfriend is just one step too far for the Killer. He plans to file a grievance with everyone involved. A very, very serious grievance. Terminate him? He’ll show them the meaning of … termination.
Sure, the Killer had a bad day. Someone accidentally lived to see another sunrise, and the Killer isn’t proud of that. But he’s determined to spread the pain around.
His bad day just might lead to the last day for several people.
Looking for positive character elements in a movie focused on a cold, clinical assassin is a little like looking for a dozen Fabergé eggs at the local supermarket. But I guess we can offer a golf clap for the Killer’s … work ethic?
He admits he’s not the thickest book on the shelf. He’s no genius, no murderous auteur. But he does have the ability to do what needs to be done—which means coping with crippling boredom, getting a little exercise and nutrition when he can, and making sure that all the little details that go into a successful assignment are done right. (A lot like a Plugged In reviewer, come to think of it.) “I’ve put in my 10,000 hours,” he tells us. A chilling statement, but at least he doesn’t cut corners.
He does seem to care about Magdala, too. And he shows some flashes of grim compassion to some of his off-the-books targets.
The Killer is not a man of faith. “I serve no god or country, I follow no flag,” he says at one point. He believes that he sends each of his marks to oblivion, not some cozy afterlife, and he’s OK with that. He rejects almost any notion that goes deeper than the barrel of his gun. “Luck isn’t real,” he intones. “Nor is karma. Nor, sadly, is justice.”
Even his faith in humankind is nonexistent. When he hears some people talk about how folks, in their hearts, are basically good, he says, “I have to ask: based on what?”
The Killer sits unclothed on a shower floor (though his own body hides anything critical).
As mentioned, the Killer’s first target is having a secret rendezvous with a paid prostitute. The woman is dressed in what looks like a leather outfit and plays with a riding crop as her client—fully clothed throughout the scene—sits and looks on. The Killer has a view of several other rooms around the neighborhood, and he spies a couple in the throes of sex. (We see the couple from far away, and it doesn’t appear that anything critical is seen.)
A joke is made about sodomy and bestiality. Someone goes to a casino, the outside of which features apparently naked neon girls. (They’re not detailed, of course, and one features stars covering where her nipples would be.)
The Killer’s “unsuccessful” hit does hit someone—and the blood sprays all over the shocked intended target. Another man gets shot in the head elsewhere, the wound coating a windshield with blood.
The Killer fights with another man. The melee involves fists, feet, fireplace pokers, pieces of furniture (which suffer an incredible amount of damage, and a huge wood chunk gets stuck in someone), kitchen graters and, oh yeah, guns. One combatant appears to have gotten seriously wounded in the groin, and blood trickles from the wound as he stalks through the house. Blood is everywhere, and both fighters suffer bloody damage. One person doesn’t leave the house alive, of course.
The Killer shoots three nails into someone’s chest and tells the victim he’ll slowly drown to death in his own blood. Blood seeps through the wounds (staining the man’s shirt crimson) and oozes out of his nose and mouth. (The Killer thinks they have at least six minutes to talk, but the timespan proves to be much shorter.) The movie strongly suggests that the Killer later dismembers the body—telling the audience that the best way to make sure a puzzle isn’t solved is to lose a couple of pieces and spread the rest around. He dumps a bucket (presumably holding a body part or two) into the water.
Another victim is shot through the head (in slow motion). The Killer breaks someone’s neck and pushes the body down a flight of stairs.
We don’t see the attack on the Killer’s girlfriend, but it was apparently horrific. The Killer’s deserted house is stained with blood in several spots, and the woman (safely in a hospital bed) is covered in injuries: Both of her hands and arms are heavily bandaged, one eye is swollen shut and she has a wicked-looking, stitched-up wound across her forehead. (She tells the Killer that she was so afraid she’d spill secrets, but she didn’t.)
Guns are pointed. People are tied up with twist ties. A dog chases an intruder. The Killer throws a very effective Molotov cocktail into a house, setting the place alight. We hear references to sexual assault.
The Killer talks a lot about his work, and he gripes that everyone wants a job done at a distance these days. He reminisces about more intimate killings: “Staged accidents, gradual poisoning—anything with a little creativity.” He longs for the days when he could engage in a “long drowning.”
Nearly 20 f-words and about three or four s-words. We also hear God’s name misused about six times, and Jesus’ name abused twice.
The Killer smokes, and he’s far from the only one. So many people light up that you’d think it was the 1970s. A woman orders a flight of top-shelf whiskey, which comes in four small glasses. She quaffs three of the four, but a guest drinks the other. (She also has a bottle and glass of wine at her table.) When she leaves the restaurant, she walks a bit unsteadily.
A Florida home contains loads of beer and liquor bottles, one of which is used as a weapon. Someone holds two bottles of wine.
The Killer drugs a dog with meat-enveloped sleeping pills.
Nearly everyone we meet here either kills people for money or hires people to kill for money, so there’s that.
The Killer is a little like the anti-John Wick.
Both are men of few words. Both are assassins in bloody, R-rated movies.
But Wick’s ludicrous quests for justice or vengeance are undergirded by the character’s incongruous humanity and even honor. He cares for his friends. He sometimes cares for his enemies. And he really cares for dogs.
The Killer does expose a wee bit of tenderness at times—but it’s rare. And, in his eyes, it’s often a mistake. “Empathy is weakness,” he says, almost like a mantra. “Weakness is a vulnerability.”
But director David Fincher has a long history of giving moviegoers chilly, difficult protagonists. Through a dozen movies and three Best Director Oscar noms, the man behind such films as Gone Girl, Fight Club and The Social Network likes his characters much like the Killer likes his revenge: cold.
In some ways, this makes the film’s problematic content all the more glaring.
It’s tempting to give a partial pass to a film with likable folks at its center. The John Wick films illustrate the point. Just as we might forgive the foibles of the fallible people if they make us laugh, we tend to be more forgiving with fictional constructs, too. It’s one of the reasons why we Plugged In reviewers take lots of notes: We don’t want to be swept into the story so much that we forget its problems.
The Killer, on paper, has far fewer documentable problems than the John Wick films. But without the accompanying humanity, those problems feel so much bigger. It’s blood without the heart, death without the life. And while The Killer is a well-made film, and distributor Netflix appears to be positioning it for an awards-season ovation, Plugged In will be sitting on its hands.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
