Early on in David Fincher’s The Killer – the unnamed titular character (Michael Fassbender) says ‘scepticism is often mistaken for cynicism’. It’s something that could be said for the director too. Fincher, famous for his clinical approach while showing human beings at their most depraved, has often been described as a cynic. He’s maintained that the core philosophy of his films is: people are perverts.But if one delves deeper into his work, it’s not hard to find that Fincher is a sceptic, not a cynic, the difference being he doesn’t automatically assume the worst of human beings. He probably wants to believe in goodness, but there are just too many examples in the world to plant a seed of permanent doubt. The protagonist in Fincher’s latest might constantly remind himself that ‘empathy is a weakness’, but he shows himself to be not cold-blooded on more than one occasion in the film. Despite whatever he might think of himself, he manages to find his moral centre to do the fair thing, even in the most unfair circumstances.The plot in The Killer is painfully simple: A hitman botches up a job, and he goes on the run. Returning home to the Dominican Republic, he realises his employer has hurt his long-time partner, in an attempt to learn about his whereabouts. The protagonist, who never acts out of emotion – all his actions are measured, he blends into the crowd like sugar in hot milk – breaks his rules for love. He seeks out his handler Hodges [Charles Parnell], the assassins sent to torture his partner, and the client – a billionaire.Even though the plot in The Killer seems direct, it won’t be far-fetched to think that the film could present itself as a metaphor for the director’s tempestuous relationship with the studios over his three-decade career. Just look out for the caption on the film’s poster: execution is everything. Those are words for a filmmaker to die by.Fincher’s run-ins with the Hollywood system have been the stuff of legends, especially the way he began his career with the troubled production of Alien 3 (1992). After his adaptation of Steig Larsson’s Millennium trilogy was shut down following just one film, The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo (2011), and the show Mindhunter (2017-2019) was discontinued after two seasons for being ‘too expensive’ for the numbers it ended up drawing, one can almost sense the weariness in the 61-year-old filmmaker.His previous film, Mank (2021), a black-and-white, no-questions-asked passion project, based on a screenplay written by his father (Jack Fincher) on the making of Citizen Kane (1931), felt like one of his more personal films. And now, in The Killer, it feels like Fincher is looking inwards more than outwards for inspiration. Even his choice of actor, Michael Fassbender, who was brought out of hibernation after being chewed out in six consecutive studio flops, seems to be telling its own story.Adapted from a French graphic novel of the same name by Alexis ‘Matz’ Nolent, The Killer opens with the protagonist talking about how contract killing isn’t a job worth pursuing if you can’t endure the waiting. He could be talking about filmmaking itself – a vocation about which actor John Candy once remarked: “I get paid for waiting, I throw in the acting for free!” This is Fincher at his most indulgent – sharing his philosophies with the world through a protagonist who is as dry, disciplined, meticulous and proud as a craftsman as the filmmaker is. Over the normal course of events, the protagonist dispassionately looks at life as something to endure. It’s a self-centered way of living saying “I don’t give a damn” about anything that doesn’t help him in his work. That’s until someone hurts a loved one.Fincher takes the template of hitman films like Jason Bourne or John Wick – slowly draining all the sexiness out of it. It seems a very deliberate choice, where he takes the very template of a genre he has helped establish, and turns it inside out. Fassbender – who hasn’t starred in movies in three years – seems to be enjoying his director’s quiet rebellion against what is expected of a ‘cool’ Fincher film. He’s dressed and styled unmemorably throughout, in Khakis, tracksuits, baseball caps. Even though there’s the usual globetrotting in a film like this, where the killer hops on transcontinental flights like they were local trains in Bombay, Fincher never milks the changing geography with the cliched top-shot of a city, with the name appearing as a title card on screen. Instead, he makes mundane observations about them like any world-weary traveller: “Paris is a city that wakes up slowly”, “New Orleans, a thousand restaurants… one menu.”There’s one fist fight sequence in the entire film – and it seems to be designed in a way to look functional, not stylish. However, Fincher’s precision shows up in the closing moments of the scene, when the killer needs to escape a pitbull. The timing and choreography of this last bit is unsurprisingly exquisite. There’s a scene featuring ‘The Expert’ (Tilda Swinton), where Fincher clasps the breaks on the film, allowing someone other than his protagonist to ruminate on their choices.Why do we do the things we do? Even while paying the price of our mental well-being, battling unfavourable situations, choosing our calling over an impersonal job that will help us lead a sane, bloodless, probably boring life? Are we all masochists? It’s a sequence worthy of Tilda Swinton’s starry presence, when she makes her moves with words and glances.The Killer might suggest that Fincher is grappling with his own label as a cold, clinical genius, who prioritises perfection over vulnerability, precision over humanity. However, as the climax of the film suggests, he wants to continue doing what he loves, even as his disdain for having to fight for his terms might be starting to take a toll on him. Unlike what many of his fans think, Fincher sees himself as a part of the many.Deep down somewhere, despite what he has said in the past, David Fincher still gives a f#$k.