A guy relies on his newly-acquired gladiator skills to save his ex-girlfriend from kidnappers.

Guns Akimbo

Guns Akimbo poster This movie is a strange mix of modern trolling culture and mindless shoot’em ups. Harry Potter Daniel Radcliffe1 plays Miles, a cubicle drone at a programming company that make crappy cell phone “games” that just charge you money. His free time consists of drinking beer and virtue signaling to the dregs of the internet. The latest craze is an underground fight club called Skizm. And after Miles, signals to Skizm watchers how horrible they all are, Skizm finds our keyboard hero and bolts guns to his hands to make him fight to the death another Skizm victim. (It sounds like they’re trying to put a message in this movie.)

Daniel Radcliffe does a good job as our I-Dont-Wanna-Be-The-Hero hero. I didn’t see him as Potter in this movie. I hope he can work off the type-casting. Ned Dennehy plays the psychotically evil villain quite well, but it’s unfortunately empty with nothing to work with. And luckily for us, the writers avoided what would have been an easily contrived yet forced romantic subplot between Radcliffe and Weaving.

However, even though the movie is billed as an action/comedy, there were never any laugh out loud moments. Maybe some chuckles and definitely some rolling eyes, but no real funny comedy. The action was over the top at times (so is the premise) but I think still suffers from the impossible hit trope. People don’t keep fighting after getting hit with a hammer in the head…three times.

As far as brain-dead entertainment movies go, this one is okay. Everything seemed to fit together, but something was just 15 degrees off. It felt like the movie was trying to moralize and make a statement, something along the lines of “Humans suck and we exploit each other”…So edgy.

Watch: maybe. Buy: no.

  1. I must apologize to Radcliffe. I couldn’t think of his name. All I could think of was Harry Potter. ↩