Guns Akimbo, the overhyped Daniel Radcliffe Twitch streamer movie is finally available to view after years of delay.
Initially released in the States, but postponed internationally due to the pandemic. Guns Akimbo starring Daniel Radcliffe is finally available to view on Amazon Prime.
Miles (Daniel Radcliffe) is stuck in a rut, with his few fleeting joyous moments spent giving abuse to online trollers.
As he’s retaliating online, Miles stumbles across Skism, a grotesque illegal manhunt stream pitting criminals and the mentally unhinged to fight to the death all for entertainment. All the while, its undefeated champion Nix (Samara Weaving) continues to reign supreme.
Dishing abuse to the administrators of the stream, Skism return the favour by doxing Miles’ personal information, turning up unannounced at his apartment, drugging him, bolting two pistols to his hands each loaded with fifty bullets and giving him twenty-four hours to hunt Nix.
To many, this premise may sound like a combination of Gerard Butler’s Gamer, and more recently Nerve starring Emma Roberts. Unwilling contestants are told to fight under the illusion of Romanic gladiator entertainment.
Are You Not Entertained
Translating this oddly common narrative to Guns Akimbo, the film, directed by Jason Lei Howden, is a nauseating affair.
Camera angles and janky use of AfterEffects cause stomachs to turn just from the action. With unnecessarily gratuitous violence and lacking, character direction emerges Guns Akimbo to be a shadow of its vibrant, comedic marketing.
Especially as the internet worked its magic to promote Guns Akimbo years before its release. An image of star Daniel Radcliffe was seen panicked, guns nailed to his hands, wearing nothing but a dressing gown and two monster slippers. This image circulated and become a hugely popular meme in 2018 raising the profile for the movie to no end.
Ultimately, Guns Akimbo only serves to shock and repulse. The story is bare-bones, and aside from Radcliffe and Weaving’s onscreen charisma, the film doesn’t provide any charming moments or interesting memorable lines of dialogue. Instead of choosing to make a female masturbation joke after Weaving had her fingers severed off.
It is a disappointing affair, but when the director’s only previous full feature credit is Deathgasm and is currently under scrutiny for sending abuse messages to critics of colour. I cannot say I’m entirely surprised as the film doesn’t exactly paint itself in a pro-libertarian light.
