While I probably would have enjoyed Guns Akimbo 20 — hell, maybe even 10 — years ago, now it seems like the kind of film I just want to end and, as sick as it is, very slowly and mostly painfully. Having seen movies like this with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steve Austin and, yes, even Jim Carrey, there should be a self-imposed ban on all camera-ready setups, starting with this one starring the former Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe.
Here, Radcliffe is Miles, a typical video-game nerd who, like most video-game nerds, spends most of his time shit-posting instead of, you know, playing. When he makes the all-too-easy mistake of commenting on the Skizm — ugh — boards, the guys behind this multimillion dollar site break into his house and strap guns to his hands.
Before he can say “ouch,” the No. 1 killer in the game, Nix (Samara Weaving), is heading to his apartment to blast him all to hell. Meanwhile, frequent viewers of the game sit around, stay fat and wish for the goriest of deaths upon him.
And that’s all well and good, I suppose, but, like I said, we’ve seen this trope so many times by now — many with a trademarked supposed satirical bent — what exactly is it Guns Akimbo is trying to say?
And what about the guy trying to say it, New Zealand director Jason Lei Howden? I enjoyed his previous flick, the metal-obsessed comedy Deathgasm, but here it seems as if he’s fallen into the perilous pit of a sophomore slump, the worst kind: a pointless killer fiasco that will probably cost Radcliffe more than a few jobs, all of which he’s lucky to get anyway. —Louis Fowler