“The Killer” may seem like other career criminal thrillers. ButDavid Fincher’shit man movie doesn’t really look, sound or play out in ways we’ve come to expect since the genre’s twin 1967 pinnacles — Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Le Samourai” and John Boorman’s “Point Blank.”

Adapted from a French graphic novel series that’s run for 25 years, the Netflix production (in theaters Friday Oct. 27, streaming Nov. 10) reunites San Anselmo-raised director Fincher with the screenwriter of his breakout hit “Se7en” (1995), Andrew Kevin Walker. It shares some of that grisly mystery’s formal daring and clinical fascination with shocking material, but “The Killer” is almost an inversion of the earlier detective story. This is a perpetrator’s perspective on the business of violence, carried out with notions of professionalism while slowly shaking the sociopath’s sense of self.Michael Fassbender’sunnamed contract killer is as delusional as he is dead-aimed focused; it’s both chilling and humanizing.

When he’s not listening to his favorite band, the Smiths, we hear the assassin’s inner monologue throughout the film’s first act. While he waits and waits in an unlit, unfinished Paris WeWork office for a target to return to their plush apartment across the square, Fassbender’s voice-over drones on about statistics and redundancies. We’re privy to semi-digested chunks of philosophy (he doesn’t know who Aleister Crowley was but likes his attitude) and tantalizing tips for international sniper success. (“I used to book a lot through Airbnb. Not anymore.”)

This goes on long enough to establish that the Killer thinks he’s special, and makes us wonder whether the whole movie will be a disembodied gabfest in one dark, single space. You’ll either admire the audacity or bail during this stretch, but when something goes wrong, the film indeed opens up and the protagonist fights for both his life and worldview.

好后,通过c夜间胡蜂属逃脱obblestoned Paris backstreets, we follow the Killer to the Dominican Republic, New Orleans, Florida, New York and Chicago. He’s as resourceful and ruthless as James Bond, but in a quotidian rather than glamorous way. His fashion sense favors aloha shirts and bucket hats. He keeps weapons, license plates and fake passports in commercial storage units. The passports bear the names of old TV characters such as Oscar Madison and Lou Grant.

The Killer knows there will be blowback from the botched job, and he trots the globe to eliminate anyone who might deliver it. Relative innocents on the itinerary will be as unlucky as the hard targets.

The picaresque rampage leads to standout supporting performances. Some, like Kerry O’Malley’s, are poignantly emotional. There’s a brutal, hand-to-hand fight with New Zealand actor Sala Baker (“Bullet Train,” “The Mandalorian”), shot in blue-gray night shadows by Fincher’s Oscar-winning “Mank” cinematographer, Erik Messerschmidt. Tilda Swinton articulates the murder-for-sale mindset with an astonishing soliloquy that seamlessly incorporates a dirty joke involving a bear.

Fassbender carries the film, though, and Fincher knows how to get the most out of the actor’s economical movements and blank-to-concerned expressive range. As his mission continues, the physical toll on the Killer becomes evident. But it’s the inner voice that keeps returning, mantra-like, with the now-failing axioms he’s built his life around — “Anticipate, don’t improvise.” “The need to feel secure is a slippery slope.” “Forbid empathy” — that’s really killing him.

“The Killer” may look like a fight for one’s life with a satisfying side of vengeance. But it’s a study of an existential death served in delectably cold and precise portions.

Bob Strauss is a freelance writer.