I was entirely on board with this movie and couldn’t figure out why people didn’t like it. It never reinvents the wheel (or attempts any sort of serious act of invention in general), but it was fun.
Until the final four minutes.
Those last minutes were some of the grimmest, darkest, nihilistic minutes of cinema I’ve ever seen — and I don’t mean that as a compliment. I don’t recall the last time I saw anything so glib in a major Hollywood picture. It’s one thing to, perhaps unintentionally, make nihilism your driving theme (like the MCU). But to so plainly define it and use it as a method of justifying your actions is next-level horror.
Richard Linklater was probably the wrong guy for this; his sincerity means he’ll find the best in people — even hit men. And that leaves those of us who don’t kill people for money feeling pretty uncomfortable, I think.
But I would have killed somebody to see David Fincher run with this script.