Given that so many of director David Fincher’s films are cold, brutal and often quite disturbing — Se7en, Panic Roomand Zodiac leap to mind — he’s the obvious choice to helm an adaptation of the long-running graphic novel series by French creators Alexis Nolent and Luc Jacamon.
 |
| Surveillance is an exercise in extreme patience, as this career assassin (Michael Fassbender) has learned, during a long and successful career that often involves waiting days for the target to show up. |
Scripter Andrew Kevin Walker augments the film’s already detached atmosphere by leaving all the characters nameless (except for a few clever and deliberate exceptions). They’re known solely by the “handles” employed by those who inhabit this lethal line of work: The Client, The Lawyer, The Expert, and so forth.
Fassbender is The Killer, whom we meet many days into his surveillance of an apartment on the other side of an active Parisian street. He’s holed up in the now-empty offices once occupied by WeWork (rather prescient on Walker’s part, given that the company filed for bankruptcy last week). He’s waiting for The Target to return home, at which point he’ll be executed by our assassin’s wicked-looking rifle.
The story is split into distinct acts, each taking the name of its primary focus. Thus, Act 1 — “The Killer” — profiles this man as Fassbender clinically details the rules, strengths, weaknesses, pitfalls, rash assumptions and mistakes that characterize his profession, in a grimly philosophical and nihilistic voice-over that runs nearly half an hour, while we watch him exercise, sleep, eat, yoga and remain focused on the apartment.
(“Trust no one.” “Forbid empathy.” “Anticipate, don’t improvise.” “Never yield an advantage.” “Fight only the battle you’re paid to fight.”)
Depending on a viewer’s sensibilities, this lengthy monologue will either be fascinating ... or dull and needlessly protracted. (I’m in the former camp.) Something about Fassbender’s presence and serene detachment makes it difficult to look away. Fincher and Walker also manage an undercurrent of very dark humor (which some viewers may not appreciate).
This mordant streak also emerges in the numerous arch songs by The Smiths that occupy The Killer’s playlist, and which Fincher alternates with the disquieting score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
The Target eventually arrives (at long last, some will think, with relief) and The Killer goes to work. Maddeningly, the man keeps pausing behind the small chunk of wall that separates two large windows. Then the moment comes, and...
...it goes wrong.
“This is new,” The Killer thinks aloud, with a soupçon of genuine surprise.
