Guns Akimbo

GUNS AKIMBO

Writer & Director - Jason Howden

2019, Germany-New Zealand-United Kingdom

Stars – Daniel Radcliffe, Samara Weaving, Ned Dennehy

 

It starts with a nihilistic introduction by villain Riktor (Ned Dennehy) that sounds like it’s criticising audiences always wanting violent entertainment and all else is a kind of virtue signalling. Indeed, it’s protagonist is a vegetarian pacifist, but he’ll soon see the shortcomings of his better aspirations when his hands are fixed with guns – turned into literal handguns – and put into a kill-or-kill-be-killed online game. But in fact, the film is totally attuned to Riktor’s credo. It’s “mindless fun” and so will sneer off any criticism. The other retort seems to be Samera Sarah strolling in and shooting people and places up to ska (is the fact that she seems to carry an invisible arsenal with her at all times a gaming gag?).

 

And then almost immediately after the villain’s introductory narration, we get the protagonist voiceover explaining that this was the day that changed everything, so that’s already two mayor strikes down for me and we’re not even five minutes in. There is a surfeit of bad writing. But, you see, Jason Howden’s previous film ‘Deathgasm’ wasn’t only braindead fun: it was rude and crude, scatalogical and frequently very funny, but simultaneously skewering and celebrating its Heavy Metal culture. Its juvenile nature was totally appropriate to its protagonist and doctrine. ‘Guns Akimbo’ doesn’t pull off or justify the same trick, although it tries to have its cake and eat it in other ways too: taking a swipe at cowardly “keyboard warriors” (“Think you’re man enough?!”) but also making them the eventual kickass hero.

 

Daniel Radcliffe has become a fairly reliable brand to follow, for he seems inclined to more intriguing projects and always visibly committed, however they turn out; and as Miles he certainly grounds ‘Gun Akimbo’ with a nerdy clumsiness and relatability (although those unaware of his wider catalogue might just see no further than Harry Potter Swears!). But we are meant to be cheering on an online troll here. Ned Dennehy is tattooed and villainous, but there’s almost the sense that he’s not fully into it, that there are moments where his innate actor almost surfaces (anyway, he’ll never be as repugnant and as scary to me as he was as Paudi in ‘Calm With Horses’).

 

Samara Sarah has doesn’t have to do anything more than walk in an shoot shit up to another blast of trendy song, a horny boy's vision of a bad girl. Oh, she's damaged too!! It's almost unintentionally funny when the story tries to grant her some earnest humanity and backstory (she has PTSD with fire! … but wait, wouldn’t that make her a less effective killing machine in this context? How the hell did she survive which such a weakness?). But it’s all pose and no trousers. It’s of the attention-deficit school of directing, where you’re never 10 seconds away from a camera tilt, superfluous jump-cut or song. It’s also greatly inspired by gaming culture and excessive fight scenes, but it has none of the style of ‘Hardcore Henry’ (which was equally braindead but audacious and convinced me more) or even the ability to pace things out or make you feel the excess like ‘John Wick’. For me, it’s Miles’ encounter with an alley homeless guy that is the funniest and most memorable encounter, where Rhys Darby as said hobo doesn’t feel chained and restrained by a perfunctory and often lazy script (let’s note the realism of a gunshot’s volume first thing and then forget about it from thereon; we own the police, but we only really see one crooked cop).

 

From the start, ‘Gun Akimbo’ feels like someone trying to ape the better action films he loves, but not nailing it – edgy lawless premise; still frames to name characters; cartoon palette and ultraviolence; random camera tricks and effects that mean nothing; and lots of obvious songs. Lots. Because it desperately grabs the songs, hoping for cool. But in the end, if you get anything from this may depend upon whether you accept a hammer fight played out MC Hammer as funny or edgy. Too confused to be genuine satire.

Ready Player One - Easter Egging for Geeks

Steven Spielberg, 2018, US

Screenplay: Zak Penn & Ernest Cline

A towering bore of empty effects work and fanboy fantasy. I mean, it’s distracting because by nature immense effects work usually is, but… Even ‘Star Wars’ transcends it juvenility with its original detail, if not its plots and themes; and even Tarantino grounds his magpie sensibility and movie-movies with distinctive casting and a recognisable voice. Although ‘Ready Player One’ is directed by heralded maestro Steven Spielberg it’s really the most generic, anonymous epic effects! direction: the camera swoops and sweeps, taking in all we are meant to be impressed by, but it signifies nothing. It speeds through and keeps on the move as if scared that if it slows down there will be nothing to hold it aloft.

It's that “Chosen One” thing, opening exposition narration, “These days, reality’s a bummer”, etc: Tye Sheridan as Wade/Parzival is appealing enough but this isn’t the place to show what you’re capable of; although evil corporate guy Ben Mendelsohn will always make some kind of dent. I started thinking that rarely has a film broadcast and signposted its own immaturity so insistently.  We are witness to a nerd’s egomania that - in this future(?) – it’s 2045, apparently, so what’s all this 80s nostalgia? So: alternative(?) reality – is the basis of all the imaginations around him – they idolise him! But, dead as he is, he posthumously insists on this unreality being tethered to the pop-culture of his youth. So, this is future amazement landlocked to one man’s youthful obsessions (he symbolically keeps his silent kid self around because *shrug*). All around is a state of arrested development: Here are riddles solved by a grown man’s fear of kissing the opposite sex; riddles solved by going backwards (gosh, the symbolism!); proof of authenticity relies upon knowing about John Hughes and other mainstream 80s teen-movie fluff.

Speaking of which: the love interest (Olivia Cooke) is a feisty action-girl who is tediously cocky at first, who is characterised a little with a prominent birthmark, just to make her, you know, a tortured soul - but it’s okay: she can cover it with her flirty fringe. And it’s notable how she loses her individuality and voice more and more until our hero asserts that he's ready to embark on romance with her, to which she says nothing. I guess she was just waiting for a dominant male?

And this seems to maintain the objections and negative responses to Ernest Cline’s source novel, which I haven’t read but are covered here by Constance Grady. It would seem Easter Egging for Geeks isn’t my sense of thing.

It’s like a fanboy fantasy totally unleashed and warping reality. Here, let me show you how I can turn ‘The Shining’ into a cool computer game! Actually, ‘The Shining’ sequence is perhaps the most awake in the film, in that imagination is demanded to utilise it. But it’s still co-opting the cool of a classic. It’s one giant Easter Egg, and it’s meant to be. There’s King Kong, Rubik’s Cube, the Iron Giant, Mecha-Godzilla, Chucky (?), ‘Krull’ and… I am not familiar with the hardware but I assume that’s namechecking games…  it goes on and on.

And then Wade and his mates rule the world’s imagination, but benignly and fairly, so that’s nice.

The best line: “Ninjas don’t hug.”

Perhaps it’s the cinematic equivalent of one of those chocolate egg cash-ins/tie-ins offering a disposable toy inside?