Have you ever watched a movie and realized pretty much right away that you are not part of the intended demographic? Unfortunately, that is what happened to me upon viewing Guns Akimbo. This doesn’t mean that the film is bad, necessarily. It’s just that I’m not a video game-playing dude in his twenties. The film has a Scott Pilgrim meets John Wick vibe but doesn’t measure up to either of those influences. Before you think that I’m going to bash the movie for the entirety of the review, let me say that it is undoubtedly entertaining. It’s fast-paced, sporadically funny and, it stars Daniel Radcliffe, who is one of my favorite actors.
Radcliffe stars as Miles, a programmer for an Angry Birds-esque phone app, except instead of birds, it’s squirrels. He’s disillusioned with this job and his boss and spends most of his day “trolling the trolls” of the internet. Which means he’s on Facebook and Instagram all day reporting people for hate speech, calling people “basement dwellers” and the like. He doesn’t just do this at work, either.
“…Miles finds out that he is the newest contestant on Skizm, which means that Nix is deadset on killing him…”
He spends most of his nights at home drinking beer and starting fights with trolls on different websites, including Skizm. Skizm is an incredibly messed up game/reality web series that is set up as a live-action video game, except the guns and death-toll are very real. The star of Skizm, aka the contestant who hasn’t died yet, is Nix (a tattoo-covered and eyebrowless Samara Weaving). Miles is watching Skizm and commenting on how crazy everyone is for watching it. An admin for Skizm tracks his IP address, and later that night arrives at his house.
Miles wakes up the next day after being severely beaten up by the Skizm team. He finds that they have bolted guns to his hands, making Miles a sort of Edward Gunhands (which is what I jokingly called this movie before I saw it, and of which a passerby on the street calls Miles early after the incident occurs). He is naturally in a panic because he can’t use his hands, and he isn’t really the gun-toting type. To make matters worse, Miles finds out that he is the newest contestant on Skizm, which means that Nix is deadset on killing him as soon as possible.
"…has a Scott Pilgrim meets John Wick vibe..."
