BEFORE: That's it for the sci-fi and superhero stuff, for a while anyway - my late nod to Comic-Con season is over, but I've still got "The Suicide Squad" and a couple other super-hero-ish films coming up in September. Plus more time-travel, a couple of Westerns, and I may finally watch "Cats", so it's bound to be a weird month.
My new job is still in a bit of limbo, so I haven't quit my job at the movie theater yet - but I have to confirm my last date there before Tuesday, when they draw up the schedule for the following week, which begins on Friday. The target date to be clear of the old job is still August 31, but there's no for-sure confirmation yet that the new job will start September 1, so I'm still a bit stuck. AND the movie theater just happened to hire back the porters, those are the cleaners who know what they're doing, instead of the ushers, who, umm, don't - myself included. SO, my job became a whole lot easier, just about one week before I'm planning to leave. I was ready to bet that the porters would come back the day AFTER I quit, but what did I know? I believe in Murphy's Law, that's for sure.
Arnold Schwarzenegger carries over from "Terminator: Dark Fate", this is the middle of three films with him in them. Working with sets of three is even easier than programming in pairs, because it gives me even more options, and if needed, I can cut out the middle film if my chain is running long. There are perhaps half a dozen "middle films" left in the year, which I can re-schedule should the need arise - right now I think I'll only need to cut one of them, but you never know.
THE PLOT: A group of eccentric assassins are fed up with Gunther, the world's greatest hitman, and decide to kill him, but their plan turns into a series of bungled encounters as Gunther seems to always be one step ahead.
AFTER: I think sometimes it's all about tone, because at some point filmmakers have to make an important decision, like is this film going to be a goofball, ridiculous comedy, or are we going to try to play things a bit straight? The decision to go with a "mockumentary" approach here might have been a solid one, because if this film were just a little bit goofier, it would be so over-the-top that it wouldn't be believable at all, it would just be stupid. And if this were just a little more serious, it might pass for a real action movie, just a somewhat silly one. It's right down the middle here, but that mockumentary format both DOES explain how we the audience are getting to see the secret moments of a group of hitmen, but also DOESN'T explain why they would allow themselves to be filmed doing assassinations for pay, which are, you know, just a bit illegal.
So the story sort of has to bend itself over backwards to accommodate this, as Blake, the leader of the group has some kind of grudge against the mysterious Gunther, and we assume at first it's because Gunther is so successful that his rep is showing up all his competition, and they're having trouble finding work because Gunther gets it all. We later find out that Blake's hatred for Gunther is intensely personal, and has to do with a love triangle, Blake's girlfriend (who was ALSO a hit-man, err, hit-woman) left him for Gunther at some point - though she claims she didn't know Gunther was ALSO a hit-man at that time. It's a very specific set of circumstances that led to this vendetta, apparently. Still, does all that justify Blake hiring a camera crew to follow around HIS crew, to document their efforts to take Gunther down? Hmm, I'm still not sure - in the end it only explains how WE get to see all this take place, and most movies don't even worry about that sort of thing, they just rely on the omniscient camera that's nowhere, yet also everywhere it needs to be to tell the story. (Another topic for discussion - does the presence of an in-story camera crew make it easier for an audience member to suspend disbelief, or does it just get in the way, by making the audience THINK about the fact that they're watching a movie? Discuss.)
Gunther is also everywhere and nowhere, and I can't help but think about the logistics of filmmaking, especially when there's only ONE A-list actor here, and he's not seen on camera until the end of the film. Sure, the whole story is built around the team tracking Gunther down, so the story makes a bit of sense, but also, when you've hired Schwarzenegger for a low-budget indie comedy, you probably only have him for one or two days, max. So all of his scenes have to be filmed together, and every other actor's schedule has to be more flexible. Arnold's a trouper, though - he probably had to do a dozen costume changes during his 2-day shoot, just to make it look like he was in more scenes than he actually was. For the majority of the film, whenever the team encounters Gunther, he's either too far away for the camera to see his face, or he's obviously being played by a stuntman, who's wearing a hoodie pulled up over his head, or some other method is used to cover up the fact that THAT isn't Arnold.
It's also possible that Schwarzegger came out of retirement, after years as the "Governator" of California, and wanted to get back into filmmaking, but was out of shape or out of practice. Yesterday's film, "Terminator: Dark Fate" also may have used a number of different techniques to make it look like Arnold was doing things as the T-800 that he didn't really do. They can use stuntmen with similar builds and then just put Arnold's face on that other body now. (There was a guy competing on "World's Worst Cooks" on the Food Network who had previously worked as Schwarzenegger's body double...). Some actor named Brett Azar was used in both "Dark Fate" and "Terminator Genisys" as the stand-in for the youngish cyborg Arnold, then they just used CGI to change his face. Here, they just used a stuntman in disguise, most of the time.
Blake's team keeps falling apart, though - they seem to be their own worst enemies, and part of that comedic technique seems to carry over from the Christopher Guest mockumentaries, like "Best in Show", "A Mighty Wind" and "Mascots", where everything that can go wrong, will. One hit-man has a robotic arm with intense crushing power, only it tends to clench up when the battery runs out (gee, I wonder if that will turn out to be important later on) and another hit-man doesn't even believe in using guns, he prefers poison, because he always vomits when he sees blood. Umm, OK, but his skills aren't going to come in handy when the team goes up against someone with sniper rifles and grenade launchers. There's also a set of brother-sister twin assassins from the Balkans, but they're more interested in visiting Disney World than completing the mission - and there's Blake's mentor, Ashley, who's been in the game so long that he's very old and keeps having heart attacks. These are the jokes, people.
Donnie, the team's explosive expert, rigs the car that Gunther's most likely to use after a meeting with his contact, but something goes wrong and literally every other car on the street blows up instead. Is Donnie that incompetent? No, it seems that Gunther's just always aware that the team is after him, so he rigs the odds in his favor, all the time. It's fairly easy for him, both because the team is THAT disjointed, and also, he's that good. You know, master of disguise who can somehow make himself look and sound like an older black woman who's three feet shorter. Hey, it's not THAT much harder to believe than the "false face" tricks they pull off in the "Mission: Impossible" movies, is it? But no, Arnold Schwarzenegger can't really SOUND like anybody but himself, can he? Be warned, if you make it through this entire film, you'll be made to listen to him sing a country music song. The SONG is great, it's a clever ditty called "Earthquake Love", but the singing - not so good. (Sample lyric - "She's the only woman who can make my bed rock / Try to catch my breath, here comes the aftershock!")
There's a ton of in-jokes here, like lines that were straight out of "Predator" that I didn't pick up on, and after Gunther gets away, there's a disappointed reaction - "He got to the chopper..." I just checked the notes on IMDB to confirm that yes, Schwarzenegger's salary made up 20% of the film's budget. And Taran Killam left "Saturday Night Live" in order to make this movie - was it worth it? I'm not sure. It only had a short release in 2017, when it made under $200,000 at the box office. You can decide for yourself, but you'd better hurry, the film's leaving Netflix on August 31.
Also starring Taran Killam (last seen in "The Accidental President"), Bobby Moynihan (last heard in "The Secret Life of Pets 2"), Hannah Simone, Peter Kelamis (last seen in "The Cabin in the Woods"), Aaron Yoo (last seen in "The Wackness"), Paul Brittain (last heard in "Hotel Transylvania 2"), Amir Talai (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Steve Bacic (last seen in "Wonder"), Ryan Gaul (last seen in "Father Figures"), Allison Tolman (last seen in "Krampus"), Cobie Smulders (last seen in "Results"), Aubrey Sixto, David "Squatch" Ward, Amitai Marmorstein, Jake T. Roberts, Scott McNeil, Alex Duncan, Chad Krowchuk (last seen in "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice"), Rebecca Olson, Hyuma Frankowski
RATING: 5 out of 10 obscure karaoke songs
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