The Killer argues that no matter how much security wealth buys or the number of datalocks that conglomerates build, these defenses can be poked and usurped by determined criminals. Conversely, no matter how clandestine criminal cells are organized, they can be destroyed, particularly from within….
David Fincher’s The Killer (stylized as The K_.ller) opens with an assassin patiently waiting for his target to appear in his carefully studied kill zone. As he sits in a seemingly abandoned WeWork office across from his mark’s Parisian apartment, we understand that we are in a surveillance economy, one where the killer functions as the narrator, and the audience is asked to monitor the economics of his behavior while measuring the effectiveness of his internally focused (but audience-directed) narration. From these calm, quiet, early scenes, we understand that the assassin must piece together a well-ordered task environment out of the messy, ill-structured variables that constitute a public hit.
In this economy of thought and action, the assassin schemes his exit strategy, recites his interior monologue, and studies the behavior of the people within his field of view—while patiently waiting for his victim to arrive. These opening scenes accomplish a few practical things. First, they allow us to engage the narrator to see what he is thinking and study how his narration (or spoken cognition) frames his behavior. Second, the film restricts us to his point of view, where we see him standing in front of an open window (framed like a display or screen), using his sniper’s scope (as a director would use a viewfinder) to observe the people in the neighborhood. What is important is that we understand that his strategic thinking and risk calculations are framed by a technician’s hyper-affinity for process and procedure.
Here, our professional killer works in isolation but constructs his agency in a highly socialized world populated by people who are surveilled by government and commercial organizations that monitor their choices and behaviors. The killer understands how to contextualize his criminality in this economy, so he crafts numerous fake identities to navigate the touchpoints; buys common items to use in his crimes; stores his criminal scaffolding in many places; and travels internationally in planes, trains and automobiles. For the story, we are asked to measure the impact of the controlled and uncontrolled variables we see, the ones that compose his well-made plans but also influence his tactical if not ethical deviations….
Read the full essay (open access) at Film International.
David Ryan is Academic Director and Faculty Chair of the Master of Arts in Professional Communication at the University of San Francisco. He’s published widely on rhetoric and film studies and is the co-editor of David Fincher’s Zodiac: Cinema of Investigation and (Mis)Interpretation (FDU Press, 2022).
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