David Fincher is good. The directing is decent, camera work clear yet not as great as usual. The sound design is great. The story ... is nonsense. This is what reviewers notice here. Is it too slow? Not enough story? Mediocre theme? Sure all of this is true yet that's not the problem it's just the issues as viewers see it. The problem is that the story is just not properly constructed so no matter what else is wrong you never quite get into the story and movie overall. Fincher has made too slow movies before that ended up working anyhow. He has made movies with lacking stories and very little theme. But he has never made movies where everything we see is nonsense.
We see a masterful hitman who for the first 25 min of the movie is just alone in a room talking about how cold and focused he is. But the first thing we see him do is screw up. He is supposed to snipe his target yet a woman constantly walks in front of the target and we see that there is no shot. Yet he takes the shot and she somehow walks in front of the bullet in that split second. Not sure why or how this happened, but I as a loser nobody with zero understanding of what a hitman does could see this coming from 100 miles away yet this guy who spent 25 min bragging about his skills can't make this 20 meter shot? Really?
Next up we see him get home and his house was broken into. His girlfriend has been injured. So what happened? Why would an expert hitman give his address to anyone whatsoever? We then see him find and hold his lawyer at gunpoint in his search for revenge. His lawyer tells him that the client made him give him the killer's address and the lawyer just thought the killer would never return home so nothing would happen. Why did his lawyer, the guy giving him the hitjobs, have his address? This makes zero sense. What would happen if the lawyer got arrested for anything and then promised to give the prosecutors bigger fishes for no jail time? This happens all the time. Well, he has the address of a mass killer and the killer would be arrested hours later. Anything can go wrong.
We then see him rob a taxi office to steal info on the taxi driver who drove the 2 killers coming after him. Instead of just paying for the info he decides to force it out and then shoots the innocent cab driver. Keep in mind if you pay someone money to tell you stuff it won't ever make the frontpage of any paper no matter how small. And basically no cops would be on the case. If you kill a cab driver after having robbed his office you will have heat on you. And the cops will know the cab driver drove the 2 people who beat up his girlfriend. They will know who the killer is as they will know it's a revenge act by the guy living in the house and the guy in the taxi office saw his face too. Half the police force would be after him in days. This is just nonsense. Plus we now also feel this guy is pure evil and stupid and can't root for him.
We then see the killer break into a house and fight another hitman. Then throw a molotov into the house to burn it down. Why not just throw the molotov first then as the guy runs out shoot him? Why walk into the house of a hitman knowing how dangerous it is? And of course he nearly dies in the hand to hand combat fight as predicted. We literally saw him use a sniper prior to that. We know he can kill a dangerous hitman without being spotted yet his plan here is this? Is his IQ 80 or something?
We then see him dine with his next target with plenty of waiters seeing his face. And after that the tracks down the CEO who put a hit on him after he failed the hit job the CEO ordered. And first time ever he doesn't kill his target. He just walks away. Again having shown his face. He just trusts that this killer CEO never meant to kill the killer. Yet the innocent cab driver is a valid target? There are no rules and no consistency here. It's just a random story. Did he forgive the CEO? Did he trust his excuse? Did he just not want to kill anymore? It could be anything, but no story is told. And why is he still living in that house? Why is he not fleeing?
So we see a fool who fails 100% of the hitman jobs we have ever seen him do track down further victims always showing his face and always killing them up close instead of from the distance. We see him fail simple plans again and again. And finally we see him not kill a target even after having killed random people who he should have left alone. I assume the comic explains this stuff, but the movie surely does not. It's still fun to watch a single time just to watch Fincher. But I wish there was a story here. And I wish reviewers would notice this stuff and not just lazily point out that "the story was simple". Be smart about the content you consume.
We see a masterful hitman who for the first 25 min of the movie is just alone in a room talking about how cold and focused he is. But the first thing we see him do is screw up. He is supposed to snipe his target yet a woman constantly walks in front of the target and we see that there is no shot. Yet he takes the shot and she somehow walks in front of the bullet in that split second. Not sure why or how this happened, but I as a loser nobody with zero understanding of what a hitman does could see this coming from 100 miles away yet this guy who spent 25 min bragging about his skills can't make this 20 meter shot? Really?
Next up we see him get home and his house was broken into. His girlfriend has been injured. So what happened? Why would an expert hitman give his address to anyone whatsoever? We then see him find and hold his lawyer at gunpoint in his search for revenge. His lawyer tells him that the client made him give him the killer's address and the lawyer just thought the killer would never return home so nothing would happen. Why did his lawyer, the guy giving him the hitjobs, have his address? This makes zero sense. What would happen if the lawyer got arrested for anything and then promised to give the prosecutors bigger fishes for no jail time? This happens all the time. Well, he has the address of a mass killer and the killer would be arrested hours later. Anything can go wrong.
We then see him rob a taxi office to steal info on the taxi driver who drove the 2 killers coming after him. Instead of just paying for the info he decides to force it out and then shoots the innocent cab driver. Keep in mind if you pay someone money to tell you stuff it won't ever make the frontpage of any paper no matter how small. And basically no cops would be on the case. If you kill a cab driver after having robbed his office you will have heat on you. And the cops will know the cab driver drove the 2 people who beat up his girlfriend. They will know who the killer is as they will know it's a revenge act by the guy living in the house and the guy in the taxi office saw his face too. Half the police force would be after him in days. This is just nonsense. Plus we now also feel this guy is pure evil and stupid and can't root for him.
We then see the killer break into a house and fight another hitman. Then throw a molotov into the house to burn it down. Why not just throw the molotov first then as the guy runs out shoot him? Why walk into the house of a hitman knowing how dangerous it is? And of course he nearly dies in the hand to hand combat fight as predicted. We literally saw him use a sniper prior to that. We know he can kill a dangerous hitman without being spotted yet his plan here is this? Is his IQ 80 or something?
We then see him dine with his next target with plenty of waiters seeing his face. And after that the tracks down the CEO who put a hit on him after he failed the hit job the CEO ordered. And first time ever he doesn't kill his target. He just walks away. Again having shown his face. He just trusts that this killer CEO never meant to kill the killer. Yet the innocent cab driver is a valid target? There are no rules and no consistency here. It's just a random story. Did he forgive the CEO? Did he trust his excuse? Did he just not want to kill anymore? It could be anything, but no story is told. And why is he still living in that house? Why is he not fleeing?
So we see a fool who fails 100% of the hitman jobs we have ever seen him do track down further victims always showing his face and always killing them up close instead of from the distance. We see him fail simple plans again and again. And finally we see him not kill a target even after having killed random people who he should have left alone. I assume the comic explains this stuff, but the movie surely does not. It's still fun to watch a single time just to watch Fincher. But I wish there was a story here. And I wish reviewers would notice this stuff and not just lazily point out that "the story was simple". Be smart about the content you consume.