In that opening scene, he boasts of having a batting average (1.000, he brags) ‘better than Ted Williams.’ Yet the job goes badly. In the ensuing turmoil, he races to erase his footsteps but not before a dissatisfied client has his girlfriend (Sophie Charlotte) nearly beaten to death at their clandestine Dominican Republic home.
He embarks on a location-hopping mission to eliminate those responsible, an odd twist for an assassin who, at length, preaches disaffection. Much doesn’t quite fit in The Killer. That he even has a live-in girlfriend — we barely see her and his thoughts never again turn back to her — seems unlikely. A revenge plot also doesn’t quite suit such a dispassionate protagonist. “Forbid empathy,” he says. And the movie, too, can be withholding of anything like emotion. The most distinct thing about Fassbender’s killer is that, like Patrick Bateman…
