KILLING GUNTHER
US, 2017, 92 minutes, Colour.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Taran Kallam, Coby Smulders, Dave "Squatch" Ward, Bobby Moynihan, Hannah Simon, Marc- Anthony Massiah, Sylvesta Stuart, Paul Britain.
Directed by Taran Killam.
If this were a British film of the 1950s, it would have been called Carry On Assassins.
A number of comments indicate that the film is silly. This is a useless kind of comment because the filmmakers intended to make a basically silly film. And, it has the blessing of Arnold Schwarzenegger who acted as executive producer and, although coming rather late into the film, is the central character, Gunther.
The film is the work of Taran Kallam, who wrote and directed as well as taking the central role of the would-be career assassin, Blake. He is joined in the film by his real-life wife, Coby Smulders.
The film purports to be a documentary, the crew hired by Blake to document his assembling a group of killers so that they could track down the arch-hitman, Gunther. There has already been a collage, quite dramatic/comic of assassinations achieved by Gunther.
The film then shows the rounding up of a collection of oddball types from all around the world, especially from Eastern Europe, who assemble for a briefing by Blake who finds it hard to control his squad. This is particularly true of an alleged IT expert who mucks everything up. And then one of the team is assassinated during the meeting by Gunther!
The film shows, at some length, all the manoeuvres that the various members of the group go to to get rid of Gunther only for them to be eliminated one by one. There are some jokes about each of the characters and their characteristics – but fairly mild. And, the documentary crew is continually in danger.
A significant character is Lisa, once Blake’s girlfriend though he wants to deny it, then taking up with Gunther, then wanting to move out on her own.
And then, in a switch, Gunther informs the audience that he has enlisted his own documentary film crew to capture his thwarting of Blake’s attempts. This leads to all kinds of entanglements, Blake’s humiliation, Gunther’s triumph…
Then, he passes, and Gunther has retired to Austria and has taken up gardening, especially for the elderly. Blake finally and frantically attacks, seeming to kill Gunther, the police giving a press conference indicating that they have film, asking for questions from the audience and, there in the audience, is Gunther himself.
A lot of the dialogue has Arnold Schwarzenegger offering lines from his various films and sending them up – and the phenomenon of his character liking country and Western music and Arnold singing a song over the final credits.
A curiosity item.
