Guns Akimbo

"Hey leather daddy, suck my clit. Nobody is killing fuckboy....except me of course."

That's a line of dialogue from Guns Akimo, a film that is the cinematic equivalent of a violent bout of food poisoning. It's a horrible experience that leaves you nauseous, shitty, tetchy, annoyed and yearning for the sweet release of death. Two hours of cliche, horrible action, performances that will make you want to slap the person who invented acting and some awful looking CGI bloodshed. It's a film made in 2020 that feels dated already. It's everything that's bad about modern day action movies. It is fucking dreadful.

I love a good cult film. But only a cult film that's earned the title. Usually a movie that died financially on its initial release or one that was critically hated but one that found it's audience as the years passed. Something like Repo Man, Army Of Darkness, Office Space, Cyborg, Re-Animator, Zombie Flesh Eaters....tbh i could name them all day and every single one of them would be better than Guns Akimbo, a wannabe cult flick born fully formed and doomed to fail as a result. Watching it feels like watching a list being ticked off. "Ok, what do we need to be a hit with stoned students?? Extreme violence? Tick. Scatalogical humour? Tick. Drugs are actually good for you? Tick. Glam rock tune stolen from Kickboxer? Tick. A wild bad guy and a vicious anti hero gal? Tick. It's a cynical ploy and it means despite all the breaking bones and splattered brains flying across the screen that the whole things has a crushing air of predictability it can never escape from.

I feel kinda bad about hating this so much because i do genuinely enjoy Daniel Radcliffe as an actor. He's one that's always willing to try something new to escape that towering Harry Potter shadow and he's never afraid to make a fool out of himself onscreen. He gives his all here as Miles Harris, a games coder who lives to stir shit on internet forums and comment pages. One night he incurs the wrath of Skism, an underground criminal group who kidnap people, arm them and force them to fight to the death for the enjoyment of internet audiences all over the world. The next morning he wakes up with 2 huge guns bolted to his hands and a warning to kill or be killed. His target is Nix (Samara Weaving), a woman who truly loves to kill. She's racked up more deaths than the Coronavirus and she's out for his blood. Miles is in for a hell of a day.

Sounds like fun doesn't it? It's not. It's shit. Radcliffe aside everyone is dire in it, especially Samara Weaving who after being so good in Ready Or Not acts here like she's gunning for an Al Pacino hammy acting award. She's embarrassing to watch but not as bad as the film's potshots at the left and right wing sides of the internet. Throw shit at both and see what sticks? Nah. In it's sights so to speak are the people online who live for misery (who we see in cutaways alarming similar to the premature ejacuation scenes in American Pie), the septic shites on reddit and 4chan and all over social media who live for that vicarious thrill of online suffering. But Guns Akimbo wants to have its cake and eat it too with it's frantic, computer game aping shoot outs that never really give a sense of the brutality that's taking place. You can't judge violence by glorifying it. Things don't work like that.

This is available to stream at Amazon. I really wouldn't bother. It's a messy turd of a movie that will leave you wanting your time back if you waste it watching this. Play a game on your phone instead. No, punch yourself in the face instead. A far more productive way to spend your time.