Guns Akimbo

A frantic arcade game with chiseled visuals, high-quality visual effects, tangible characters and a few unexpected twists that will hold the attention of the non-target audience (i.e. me). Radcliffe’s presence raises the film almost to A-movie level, but the one most deserving of praise is the director, who has a great sense of narrative dynamics. You’d expect this to be dumber. [Sitges FF] (05/10/2019)

A very gritty and crazy romp in which Daniel Radcliffe fights against a bunch of crazy killers led by Samara Weaving. It's full of blood and black humour, but once it slows down a bit, it turns out that it actually has very little to offer in the non-action scenes. (19/03/2020)

A video game-like, punk, stylish and brutal coke-fuelled ride! Daniel Radcliffe wakes up with guns nailed to his hands and finds himself in a death-match against Nix, the ultimate female assassin (a great Samara Weaving, again in a completely different but excellent role). It's a very enjoyable guilty pleasure that sets a fast pace right from the start, the characters are properly wacky, blood is not spared, the jokes work and surprisingly it's not as silly as it might first appear. Good fun with video game references. 7/10. (03/03/2020)

The director of the entertaining metalhead horror flick Deathgasm picked up the gauntlet that remained lying on the action-movie battlefield following the breakup of Neveldine/Taylor. Guns Akimbo is a cyberpunk action comedy with video-game styling that borrows a lot from Crank and Hardcore Henry, though it fakes its sincere punk energy with fanboyishly phoney grittiness. It’s a shame that the film is unable to untangle itself from its nerdishly scraggly essence, which motivates not only its humour, but also its embarrassingly messianically self-reverent climax. (22/08/2020)

A sibling of Crank in which Statham is replaced with Harry Potter in a bathrobe with pistols nailed to his hands. The screenplay seems like it was written by a high-school kid who had just discovered Cypress Hill, but it’s filmed with eagerness and unbelievable ferocity. Its allure lies mainly in the visuals and the fact that it's action packed. It takes it a while to really get going, but it’s entertaining and enjoyable overall. It’s probably meant to be a sort of wake-up call to millennials to throw down their cell phones, grab their guns and go kill people. (05/03/2020)

You have already seen Daniel Radcliff cast spells, grow horns, let the winds blow on an island, and get lost in a jungle, and now you have a chance to see him running around the city in his underwear and slippers and firing pistols nailed to his hands because he is an internet troll dragged into a life and death game. This is a high-octane breakneck and R-rated comedy version of the now few-years-old Nerve which takes on the ills of the modern internet generation and is quite entertaining nonsense. Sometimes I have a problem with movies that try to be all meta and make fun of clichés in action films, despite later clinging onto those same clichés themselves. Nevertheless, I found it really entertaining. [Sitges 2019] (03/10/2019)

What a silly film, yet I did have a great time regardless of that (or perhaps precisely because of that). I’m not a huge fan of Daniel Radcliffe, but thanks to the role of Miles, I might even find a liking for him. The film had exactly what I was missing in Hardcore Henry, it didn't cease to be fun by a constant repetition of the same, the story was developing and clearly building up towards a certain goal. It was a pure action film that wasn't devoid of humor and totally bizarre situations. I got a greater dose of fun than I’d expected. (21/05/2020)