Michael Fassbender plays the titular character, narrating us through his modus operandi and life as a professional assassin. This means hearing his Zen-ish mantra of "avoid empathy" over and over again, and indeed it makes him impossible to empathise with, a cold fish for whom the only guiding principle is to be as efficient and business-like as possible, without emotional involvement.
This could be a serious dramatic problem for the film, even when the killer makes a mistake on a job which turns him instead into a loose end to be readicated and means that he has to set about methodically getting rid of those who would eradicate him. But giving him any more vulnerability would actually detract from the character and the point of the exercise, as would allowing any one of his targets an emotive final speech.
This is a dark world hidden in plain view, shot through with detached style, akin to Ryan Gosling's in Drive, or the even more glaring parallel of Alain Delon in Melville's Le Samourai. Something quite uncommon, a killer who takes no pleasure in his work and all to a soundtrack of '80s tunes by The Smiths.
7/10
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