Guns Akimbo Review

March 1, 2020 at 8:41pm
By Jason Stettner

This is another one of those films where it seems like the team behind it doesn’t necessarily understand what gaming is. Whatever the case, it’s an adrenaline filled thrill ride featuring wacky action and some comedic moments throughout. This follows Miles (Daniel Radcliffe) as he attempts to survive after getting knocked out and waking up with guns literally bolted into his hands. That sort of ruins his future in programming, and probably might cause some health issues.

After he deals with the mental block of that being his situation, he realizes that now he’s a contestant on this deadly game show run by a gang called Skizm. It’s a livestreamed event and this in turn showcases many reaction shots to us from random weird folks which honestly were more on the cringe side than anything. Whatever the case, they’ve sent the deadly Nix (Samara Weaving) after him and he’s more of a friendly fun runner than a fighter.

In the middle of this, he’s been trying to reconnect with his ex Nova (Natasha Liu Bordizzo). It’s quite a mix match of weird events and basically horror to this person as he’s being hunted. Definitely not someone suited for this type of violence, but he just has to deal with it. The narrative isn’t very heavy in this one, and it’s kind of generic if you boil it down. It has some fun to it, but a number of the jokes didn’t quite land and a lot of this is awkward if you get the source content they’re attempting to mock.

This did carry a rather frantic style to it with fast pacing. There was of course lots of action, creative gun fights and troves of violence. It reminded me of The Running Man while being less unique in the people he faced off against.

It was neat how they came up with various weird situations that were largely focused on a laugh as opposed to being anything remotely serious. This also provided some silly vibes at times, and again some of the narrative was really weak.

This is of course a ridiculous situation, but they lean into it entirely and it does make sense to a degree with the culture of today. Still, some of the more cringe type elements made me feel like the team behind this doesn’t exactly get gaming as that seems to be the target for this one.

The Conclusion

Guns Akimbo is a really average sort of adrenaline thrill ride that leans on comedic aspects that are inspired by gaming’s worst qualities. It’s definitely nothing special, but perhaps an enjoyable viewing if you’re just looking for a dab of violence.

It certainly doesn’t shy away from the gore, or going all in for laughs at various points. I’d note that Radcliffe does a good job as the lead in these awful situations. Weaving was also really just so over the top, an aspect of her character for sure. There’s not much more to say about this one. It hits some marks when it comes to the laughs, at other points it was more cringe in a bad way.

It wasn’t anything particularly special, and I felt like I’ve seen this same plot done roughly the same many times prior. It does have a fast, frantic sort of energy so I suppose that helps it stand out. Oh, and also the guy waking up with guns bolted to his hands, that’s different for sure.

Guns Akimbo Review at Home with Standard Viewing

Rating Overall: 5.5