Get Arnold (Killing Gunther, 2017)

SNL Alumni Taran Killam wrote and directed this entry into the fake documentary genre.  Killam plays Blake, a mid-level hitman who aspires to prove himself by taking out the infamous Gunther. Gunther is the hitman all other hitmen both admire and fear.

Blake believes he will cement his own status as a legend if he can kill Gunther. For help, he assembles a team of assassins and starts setting traps for Gunther.  He has hired a documentary crew to follow he and his league of assassins.  Of course, it becomes increasingly clear that these assassins are ill equipped for taking on Gunther and they start to make fatal errors.

As a comedy, the characters to to be made with quirkiness in mind.  There are scenes where Blake gets frustrated by a barrage of questions from his tech guy, because they are interrupting his dramatic monologue.  Bobby Moynahan plays the excited Donnie, whose gimmick is explosives.  I would say that Aaron Yoo’s Yong is the most interesting assassin, as his gimmick is poisons.  This actually leads to some comical situations where he finds himself largely ineffective in the mission.

But the film has one big problem.  Who do you see on the posters? Whose name features most prominently in both the posters featured in this review? Arnold Schwarzeneggar.  And boy, when he shows up?  The film starts getting more fun.  Know when he shows up? About the last twenty minutes of the film.

Fans of Schwarzeneggar will get impatient waiting for him to appear, and he shows up to late to save the film from the mediocrity that proceeds it. Killing Gunther is not terrible…but it just is not as entertaining as it could be in it’s road to the exciting stuff at the end.