The Killer: Grimly fascinating

The Killer (2023) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong violence, profanity and fleeting sexuality

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.17.23

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.

And, given that the primary character is a career assassin, the role similarly is a natural for Michael Fassbender, who excels at ruthless indifference. He radiates a degree of calm that is pure façade: a surface mask that conceals a cobra’s speed with a grizzly’s explosive brute force.

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.

Mank: A true dazzler

Mank (2020) • View trailer

Five stars. Rated R, for profanity and sexual candor

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.8.21

Director David Fincher’s Mank is a magnificent experience in all manner of ways, starting with Gary Oldman’s mesmerizing portrayal of celebrated journalist, author and screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz.

 

Screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) and actress Marion Davies
(Amanda Seyfried) meet over a shared cigarette; they'll soon bond over their
tempestuous fealty to William Randolph Hearst.

It’s also a bravura, often breathtaking display of cinematic art. Fincher, cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt and editor Kirk Baxter have meticulously replicated the style, atmosphere and very essence of the film — Citizen Kane — whose creation drives this narrative. The sharply sculpted screenplay — by Fincher’s late father, Jack — even mimics the non-linear storytelling style that was so innovative in Orson Welles’ classic.

 

The saga is rigorously period-authentic, and (mostly) historically accurate. Jack Fincher conflates a few key events — and meddles a bit with chronology — to heighten dramatic tension, but his characterization of key players is (often dismayingly) dead-on.

 

Perhaps Jack Fincher’s most audacious stroke is his revival of a controversy that film scholars have deemed long settled: the question of who actually wrote, and/or contributed the most, to the script of Citizen Kane. Fincher pere et fil clearly imply that Mankiewicz deserves the lion’s share of credit, whereas actual evidence weighs far more heavily in Welles’ favor. 

 

Ah, but even here, Fincher’s script is cheekily ambiguous … because their Mankiewicz clearly isn’t the most reliable narrator of — or participant in — his own life.

 

(In the movie world, stubborn skeptics are akin to those who insist that Shakespeare’s plays actually were written by Francis Bacon. For the record, though, Welles and Mankiewicz shared the screenplay Academy Award, the sole victory among Kane’s nine Oscar nominations.)

 

Fincher opens his film in early 1940, as Mankiewicz is deposited at an isolated ranch in Victorville, California, roughly 90 miles from the hedonistic Hollywood environment that exacerbates his worst tendencies. He’s left with secretary Rita Alexander (Lily Collins), longtime friend and writing associate John Houseman (Sam Troughton), and a nurse (Monika Gossmann) to care for a badly broken leg sustained in a recent driving accident.

 

Mankiewicz’s assignment from Welles: to come up with the initial draft of a screenplay depicting the imperious career of a combustible newspaper mogul who — wink, wink, nudge, nudge — isn’t really based on William Randolph Hearst. Except that of course it is.

Concussion: Grim reality check

Concussion (2015) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity and occasional profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.24.15

Great movie entrances are pure magic.

Consider George C. Scott’s eyebrow-raising pep talk, at the opening of Patton. John Travolta, strutting down the street, in Saturday Night  Fever. Or, more recently, Christian Bale’s meticulous “suiting up” and comb-over, in American Hustle. Everything you need to know about each of these characters, in one quick scene.

When renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Julian Bailes (Alec Baldwin, center) finally gains an
audience with veteran NFL doctor Joseph Maroon (Arliss Howard, right), Dr. Bennet
Omalu (Will Smith) is enraged to hear that his meticulous research into brain injuries
is being dismissed. With prejudice.

Writer/director Peter Landesman grants Will Smith’s Dr. Bennet Omalu a similarly illuminating entrance, as Concussion begins. It’s a courtroom confrontation; Omalu has taken the stand to testify; his credentials have been challenged. In a bravura display of gentle chiding, unassuming pride and a droll insistence on full disclosure — leavened with an oh-so-slightly-mocking sense of humor — Omalu takes complete control of the room.

It’s a brilliant display of acting chops by Smith, who — from this moment onward — firmly has our hearts and minds. We’ve learned everything essential about this doctor, mostly crucially that he is a good and honorable man. That he respects the dignity of others, and insists — in turn — that they respect him.

The scene is marvelous: destined to become a much-viewed YouTube hit.

And, of course, the perfect way for Landesman to start his film.

Concussion, based on journalist Jeanne Marie Laskas’ exhaustive September 2009 exposé in GQ Magazine, charts Omalu’s initially lonely and Sisyphean struggle to get the National Football League to acknowledge that grown men bashing their heads together, even when wearing the (minimal) protection afforded by a helmet, likely isn’t good for their grey matter.

Indeed, far from “not good.” Potentially life-altering, even deadly.

Sensible people, confronted with such a suggestion, would nod and say, “Well, of course; what else would you expect?”

But the NFL circled the wagons, sent out the lawyers, and — possibly — pulled strings in Washington, D.C., to thoroughly discredit anybody daft enough to suggest such a thing. We’re talking football, folks: the one thing in Amuuurica capable of generating more foolish passion than the right for each citizen to own 437 guns.

But that’s getting ahead of things.