With his 2020 film Mank doing pretty well, picking up two Oscars as it did, director David Fincher sticks with Netflix for his latest project.

Based on a French graphic novel, it stars Michael Fassbender as a hitman who has somewhat of a bad day at work.

Setting up camp opposite the hotel where his mark is staying in Paris is an assassin for hire, known, appropriately enough, as the killer (Fassbender).

He’s experienced and good at his job, and yet this particular target proves to be unnecessarily annoying, leading to the job not being completed.

So he decides to head back to his safehouse in the Dominican Republic, only to find that it isn’t safe anymore, with his girlfriend Magdala (Sophie Charlotte) having had a visitor of her own, that has resulted in her being sent to hospital.

Understandably not impressed with the unwelcome visitor, he decides to work his way back up the chain and discover who ordered this hit clearly aimed at him, and have a little ‘chat’ as to why.

Even with an auteur like Fincher at the wheel, it’s still difficult to see this other than a fairly standard revenge film.

It attempts to have some originality in having Fassbender narrate much of his dialogue, in a fairly dull, whisper-like voice-over, but it lacks any kind of personality and isn’t exactly engaging.

It’s also set into chapters, again trying to be a little different, but it’s not only a device that’s been used a number of times before, its chapters here are really by the book and disappointingly predictable.

It’s difficult not to compare it to something like 2000’s American Psycho that featured the inner monologue of killer Patrick Bateman, but where Bateman was deliciously grotesque, Fassbender’s killer is mediocre and bland by comparison. Is it too much to ask for a murderer for hire to have some modicum of charisma? It seems so in this case.

It’s not all bad, with Fincher’s direction always worth watching, with some of the more violent scenes being punctuated with a sharp score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and some excellent scenes with the always worth watching Tilda Swinton, , but much like the film’s protagonist, The Killer doesn’t quite hit the target.