journal features
movie reviews
photo of the day

movie review - The Killer

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Kokubunji, 2023.11.10

I needed a break after some very long weeks of late. I started up Netflix and there was The Killer. It's about an assassin many years into a career and on a job spent waiting in a dead "WeWork" office in Paris. For a week. When his target -- a private figure, from what we can tell -- finally shows up, the assassin misses his shot. He goes home to the Dominican Republic and finds his wife beaten almost to death.

With her in the hospital, he begins a mission that honestly I think should have been how Taken played out way back when. He uses one thin lead that he's got -- the attackers came in a taxi -- and works his magic. Soon he's in Lousiana, then Florida, then a ritzy suburb of New York, and finally Chicago. He knows he'll take a beating en route, but his objective is to ensure that the promise he makes his wife's brother is kept. That will not happen again.

It's a spare story and frankly I think they leave a bit more to your interpretation than I was expecting from Netflix. I had to play the last bit of narration over three times, I'm sure I'll have to think it over for a couple of days.

"Sayonara North America," indeed, my friend.

rand()m quote

...and when you try to get some, it surely can be hard. There's always trouble waiting, when you leave your own back yard.

—Motorhead, Lost Johnny (lyrics by Mick Farren)