Listen…I’m sure there’s a good movie in here, it’s just buried underneath a pile of rubbish.
I really wanted to like this movie. The premise sounds insane and I was expecting at least well-choreographed fight sequences. Aside from a few interesting camera techniques and good cinematography, I was disappointed overall.
Guns Akimbo follows Miles, an antisocial recluse, who spends most of his time on the internet. One day, Miles messes with the wrong people and wakes up with guns bolted to his hands. He discovers that he has been forced to participate in the live-stream “Skizm,” where he must fight to the death against his competitor, Nix.
What ruined my enjoyment of the movie was every aspect surrounding the fights. The editing was completely obnoxious with rapid quick cuts in each sequence.
It felt as though the movie directors and producers thought it was being stylish, but it only served to assault my vision through a barrage of bright and flashy colors. The editing did get a bit better as the film went on, but the first half was so abrasive that I can’t forgive it.
Moving on to the second worst part of this movie: the dialogue. As I said before, the editing felt as though it was trying way too hard to be hip and cool. The same could be said for the writing. It feels like the director is unaware of the culture he references.
When Daniel Radcliffe is explaining how he “loves to troll”, I couldn’t help but cringe. His comments and those who reply to him were at parodist levels of disconnection. It all reeks of an edgy aesthetic and it only exists to hurt the film.
The dialogue is awful aside from the out-of-touch references. There is an attempt to pull off one-liners and they would never land. The script would resort to low brow humor where the character only screams expletives, and that’s the joke. It honestly feels that the script was written by a 16 year old.
The movie feels that it needs to constantly be funny and it rarely succeeds. It only hurt the film rather than help it. There was not one aspect of the dialogue that was decent.
As if the dialogue wasn’t bad enough, the characters were just as bad. They were over-the-top and unlikable characters. I think that’s what the film was going for, but the attempt was butchered by the horrendous dialogue and terrible direction.
I don’t blame the actors at all. They seemed to be genuinely trying their best to work with what they were given. Daniel Radcliffe and Samara Weaving have proved that they can act in previous films, I just think the director was unaware of how to help his actors.
Maybe my expectations were too high, but this film was a complete stinker. I really am disappointed that there weren’t as many great fight scenes as I was expecting.
Guns Akimbo is available to rent on Amazon right now, if you would like to judge the movie for yourself.
