SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
While it may not be for everybody, Guns Akimbo serves as mindless entertainment for those who want to pass some time, thanks to Daniel Radcliffe, unrestrained action sequences and plenty of loud noises.
Daniel’s Radcliffe is clearly challenging himself with a set of very diverse roles: from playing a corpse that farts in Swiss Army Man, and a disenchanted teenager with a fascination for horses in the play Equus. So what about him playing a game developer who is forced to engage in a real-life gunfight? Sure, it’s right up his alley. Chances are, you probably got to know of this film seeing Twitter images or Youtube trailer thumbnails of a manic-looking Radcliffe in a bathrobe brandishing two pistols. I was too. The trailers reminded me a lot of The Verve, which involved an outlaw gang of programmer overlords who surveil unwilling participants and force them to act in outrageous ways. So I wasn’t surprised it would be a cheesy, surface level action flick with those all too familiar tech tropes. Normally I wouldn’t watch that. The reason I chose to rent Guns Akimbo, however, is because of my admiration for Radcliffe, a movie star who isn’t afraid to take on risqué roles in films with eccentric premises.
With a world so unbelievable and characters so paper-thin, watching Guns Akimbo is like watching a 90 minute video game cutscene. It is quite an appropriate film for avid gamers who play first person shooters. With visually spectacular action sequences and serviceable dialogue it gives gamers a chance to vicariously experience real-life gunfights in a reality where society never questions the morality of indiscriminate killing. Once you get into the mood though, it’s fun to watch.
Miles (Radcliffe) is a young programmer working for a Silicon-Valley-esque game company with coworkers who are just as flaky. He has a distaste for trolls on the internet so much so that he himself trolls them back. This one night, however, he gets on the nerves of Riktor (Ned Dennehy) who leads “Skizm”, an underworld club that live streams real death matches between psychos and criminals. Riktor and his goons then break into his apartment and organize a match between Miles and the champion Nix (Samara Weaving). Miles must figure out how to get himself out of the situation, without the help of civilians who think he’s an active shooter, and without endangering his loved ones.
Miles, who Radcliffe plays with an innocent but competent demeanor, kept me anchored to the film. His difficulty completing simple tasks with two pistols bolted to his hands, like putting on trousers or operating his smartphone is perfect physical comedy but unfortunately underutilized, both in terms of quantity and the intensity of the humor. Some inspiration from Charlie Chaplin’s or Jackie Chan’s films might have been useful here. Radcliffe acts out Miles’ frustration and fear to a T, but none of it is believable because the film itself never plays anything as a horror sequence. What’s nice is that he isn’t a bumbling idiot, but an amateur who has to get out of his own way and rise to the occasion. That little bit of character development isn’t enough to save this film though.
I was pleasantly surprised by the supporting cast too. Samara Weaving turns in a captivating performance as a psychotic bloodthirsty killer with just a hint of the damaged, innocent child she is underneath, but her talents are underutilized by the story. There’s a huge missed opportunity to inject some much needed humanity through Nix’s story, though I acknowledge it would be difficult to do so, given the unbelievable setting of the film. There are some genuinely funny moments involving them, and other characters like the homeless man with a New Zealander accent (Rhys Darby) and Miles’ coworker Hadley (Milo Cawthrone). Some credit is due for the snappy screenplay and realistic dialogue written by Jason Lei Howden, but he kind of dropped the ball on his directing. The action scenes are colorful and gory, probably just what you were looking for in a hardcore action film. But the inconsistent, jerky camerawork and editing can put you off if you don’t have an appetite for the usual high-octane blockbuster action sequences.
At a time when a serious pandemic severely limits our mobility and restricts avenues of entertainment, the need for new, stimulating experiences, to alleviate boredom is very welcome. Guns Akimbo can help you with that, if you can turn off your brain. A lot of things don’t make sense, but this isn’t that kind of movie. It’s plain bonkers and something you can just keep on in the background, and occasionally tune into. If you’re stuck home with children under 18 though, definitely refrain from doing that.
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