Review: Killing Gunther

Killing Gunther has a fun premise. A group of rival assassins band together to kill the top assassin in the world, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Even writing this premise down here makes me smile. However this is the one joke Killing Gunther has and for 90 minutes we get little else to help raise the laugh count of the film.

I have written before about joke density, most recently in praising last year's Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping or this year's The Lego Batman Movie. Comedies that are largely centered around a high concept premise must have an incredible amount of jokes. Some will land and others won't but the sheer amount keeps the film buoyant in place of a plot. Killing Gunther has a dismal joke density.

This is surprising given the talent on screen. Bobby Moynihan, Hannah Simone, Allison Tolman, Cobie Smulders and writer/director and star Taran Killam are all funny people. With this kind of ensemble, the jokes should be plentiful. Perhaps this where Killam failed, he assembled funny people but didn't write them funny lines.

The film is shot in a documentary style as Killam's Blake has hired a film crew to document his victories in killing Gunther. Each killer has a personal vendetta against the titular assassin however achieving revenge won't be as easy as they planned. Gunther is always one step ahead of them, although how he achieves that is never really explained. The action set pieces are too cartoonish to give the film any other dimension other that of humor, which never really pays off.

One-noted, Killing Gunther can never really move past its central joke. The film feels lazy in many ways as if Killam figured the cast would bring more to the table that they do. Seeing Schwarzenegger do comedy again is fun and he commits fully to playing around with his macho image. Sadly, that isn't enough recommend the film.

2/5