It’s tough to take a piss when holding two guns. It’s also tough to eat, put on clothing, open doors, use a cell phone, do a handstand, call for a cab …in fact, there are almost no advantages to holding a gun in each hand while going about your daily routine. Harry Potter he would have been better off with a non-functional wand.
Such is the dilemma of Miles (Daniel Radcliffe), a gamer of the future who falls in with the wrong crowd.
I’m underselling this; “dilemma” sounds like Miles has to choose dessert toppings at an ice cream bar. This is not Miles’ fate. Imagine instead – a bunch of Slytherins break into Harry’s apartment, knock him out, and do some elective surgery on him. When he wakes up, Harry has both hands permanently affixed to handguns and a price on his head. That pretty messed up, right?
You could say Miles brought this on himself. His fate was a penalty for messing with Skizm – an underground organization that promotes live fights to the death. Be careful what you’re into … the internet knows all. Doesn’t part of you wish this were a thing? That whenever an anonymous troll messed with your enjoyment of life that internet enforcers would exact a timely penalty on site? At least part of me feels that way.
Adding to Miles’ misery is that he has been matched against Nix (Samara Weaving), who spent the intro of this movie doing some Fast & Furious crap to advance to the semis of murder or whatever their system is. I’ll give it this much – “sudden death” overtime has genuine meaning in the Skizm world. So, I mean, picture this, just picture it: you’re a pacifist computer nerd, but you enjoy shoot ’em up gaming; one day you wake up attached to Guns Akimbo with a note saying you’ve been pitted in a fight-to-the-death with a mass murderer … and you have to take a piss.
I was kind of hoping the screenplay would be more of a hammer-nail exploration (“when you’re a hammer, every problem is a nail”) and investigate what sorts of problems can be solved while holding guns in both hands. The screenplay didn’t do that; perhaps that’s the point – almost no problems can be solved with only guns as tools.
In a screenplay about the excesses of human violence and the blurred line between fantasy murder and genuine murder, being attached to weapons with live rounds isn’t such a bad thing. And I’m very glad Miles took the Gandhi route for most of the film. You can’t just make somebody a killer by attaching guns to their hands. It doesn’t work like that … even in America.
Guns Akimbo is reckless, bloody fun. It is not for the faint of stomach, nor for the impressionable. It plays a lot like Nerve in the film’s interaction between real-life recklessness and screen interaction. There’s a message there. I kind of wish the film had ended with a resolution to defeat not only the evil Skizm matrix, but the trolls who spur it on. I suppose that’s asking a lot: the film clearly begs the question, “is it not enough to introduce Dirty Harry Potter?” In the meantime, gun-happy adults should have fun here.
There once was a young Gyffindor
Who used bullets in his death eater war
When he ran out of shots
He found, in tight spots
“Avada kedavra” proved a useful encore
Rated R, 98 Minutes
Director: Jason Lei Howden
Writer: Jason Lei Howden
Genre: Chaos
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Did you enjoy Natural Born Killers?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: People repulsed by ultraviolence
