Guns Akimbo

The simmering resentment of keyboard warriors has become office warfare in fun movies like Mayhem and The Belko Experiment. Now the big metaphor is sent into the wild with Guns Akimbo, starring Daniel Radcliffe as Miles – a trollish “trollhunter” who probably deserves to die just for making computer games designed to rip off little kids. Instead, Miles learns that the forces behind the violent streaming website Skizm don’t like being mocked online. Their goons break into Miles’ apartment, bolt guns onto his hands, and toss him out to take on the assassination game’s current champ Nix (played by Samara Weaving, who’s already a veteran of corporate carnage as the female lead in Mayhem.) The internet loved the production image of Radcliffe brandishing his firearms while on the street in a bathrobe and fuzzy slippers. It’s a little surprising that Guns ended up with this limited release, although the setting of Shrapnel City gives away that writer/director Jason Lei Howden has a small-screen vision. The script can’t deliver on non-stop action like the Crank films, either. Nix still plays as a knowing wink on the major-studio obsession with bad-ass Mary Sues. Radcliffe and Weaving also eventually unearth some vital humanity in Howden’s madcap desensitized setting.

[R]