Guns Akimbo (2020)

Guns Akimbo wastes no time in getting to it's very high concept conceit. The film very quickly sets up its story about Radcliff forced into internet death matches watched online with guns strapped onto his hands. It's not a new idea, folks walking death matches on social media is an update of folks watching them on TV which is an update of people watching them on a stage. It's been done a million times before and will be done a million more times. So the idea needs something new. In this case its the social media wrinkle, how it turns us all into monsters who cheer on the deaths of strangers.

While I think there is something interesting there to be explored I also think it requires a lot more nuance and examination than Guns Akimbo is up for. It's more interested in the cliched "people are so aggressive online" than in exploring the way our online interactions play into our in person interactions, the way connections can be created through different mediums, and how class and economic circumstances affect which avenues we have for our interactions.

Instead Guns Akimbo stays in its oh so cool Purge meets Tik Tok aesthetic. It errs on the side of funny and irreverent instead of facing up to the horrific ideas it wants to exploit for entertainment value. And in doing so it looses most of what could have made it interesting. The film seems to think Radcliff figuring out how to get by with guns strapped to his hands is far more entertaining than it is. The film seems to think almost all of what it is doing is more interesting than it is.

Guns Akimbo can be enjoyed for its hip cool humour, fairly surface level stuff. I guess I just hoped it would work on a deeper level too. 

Guns Akimbo
Starring: Daniel Radcliff, Samara Weaving
Writer/Director: Jason Lei Howden