Guns Akimbo (2019)
Get Loaded
Forever ago, I once saw a meme of a man with two guns and a bathroom robe standing in the street with a tagline something along the lines of “Crack, not even once.” The man was Radcliffe - and it was making jokes about the picture as it would tie to Harry Potter. Years, and I mean Years later, the movie that that still shot came from finally has a trailer, and I add it to the queue. Tonight, the queue gives us that movie - toted as an action comedy by it’s genre tags. Yes, I realize I’m horrible at sticking to my plan of not overlapping genres - but if there’s something nobody should really complain about, it’s there being a little extra humor in their lives, so I think we are all still probably okay right? Keep both hands free, because tonight we go Guns Akimbo.
Alright, I’m going to do something that I don’t necessarily want to do - because I like movies being able to stand on their own and I shouldn’t necessarily immediately compare it to other movies even though I frequently do because it’s the quickest way to get a grasp if you’ve seen the comparison material. This movie is very much like Wanted in a watered down basic snapshot, except shot for a more millennial oriented audience. Now it’s really just a basic comparison - both are action movies that happen to have some comedy in them, you’ve got a “loser” main character that becomes a real boss by the end, and there’s a lot of gun violence going on. Anything past that and maybe the comparison starts to fall apart more - it’s like saying Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario Brothers are the same game because they are both side scrollers where you collect gold things. Instead of some secret spy cult and being the chosen one, this movie instead lets it’s character just be a nobody who miffed off the wrong people. Our programing hero likes to troll the internet - as he refers to in narration “troll hunting” - which really implies that he would go after trolls, although in effect on the screen he really is the one that’s doing the trolling given the context, but I digress. He makes angry the runner behind a underground death-match circuit, they come to his house knock him out and attach some guns to his hands with some instructions to either kill their current champion or be killed himself.
There’s commentary on here. It’s not exactly the most subtle about it either - being that it doesn’t necessarily impact the action it doesn’t bother me much, It does have some impact on the comedy though - and the comedy is going to be a little hit or miss for people, which isn’t anything new given the nature of comedy. The situations are, without doubt, ridiculous and many of the character interactions are overdone many times as well. There’s some jokes in there that are crass and some might not like because of such. A large part of the comedy is also physical comedy - like someone trying to do anything when their hands are bolted to guns, like putting on pants or trying to pee. There’s also a handful of masturbation related jokes - which honestly one of them did make me chuckle with it’s timing, but I get that’s not everybody’s cup of tea.
Back to the commentary, although it might be rather laughable in how straight forward it is, it’s mainly set at things that people wouldn’t be too surprised at like the human penchant for violence and it’s consumption as a media. Of course, you get things more tech-obsessed oriented like having their head stuck to their phone, or commentary that is referential to media in general - a quip about guns being louder than they are in movies, for example. Although there is a bunch in there, most of it is pretty front and center about it, delivered by one character or another here or there, but it doesn’t feel as though it’s preaching to an extent that it effects the movie in a negative way - it doesn’t suddenly come to a jarring halt for a twenty minute monologue about the evils of man, for example. Instead, it just has or hero have a little minute or less anger rant at an audience through a camera.
Quite the predicament.
Now, more so than the commentary or plot, people that are going to watch this are probably doing it for two reasons: action and crazy. Any given still of this movie largely makes it feel like it’d be a great double feature with Mandy if I’m being honest - or perhaps with something a bit more frantic like Crank. The cohesiveness that makes it feel like it fits with Mandy is much more of a manic thing - it all seems so absurd and crazy. However, I chose that movie amongst plenty of other movies for a reason - it also really feels like it fits that mentality with its use of lighting and colors. It’s a pretty movie, quite the eye-candy extravaganza, but it’s also not without it’s faults for it. Action scenes are high energy, with plenty of effects and guns and things in them - but at times they are going to be hard to follow for some people. Strange options like flipping the 180 with a slightly cranked speed could lead a watcher to be a little confused as to what’s going on, amongst the various shifts in normal, high and low speed. They are quite fun to watch - I mean, there’s barely anything about this movie that doesn’t go double-handed over the top. As far as action goes, it’s also very rarely anything that isn’t gun oriented - you won’t find any fancy kung fu fights here, the closest you’ll get is a hammer fight towards the end and a car chase more towards the middle. When things look great, it looks great mainly because of the lights, colors, and effects.
I don’t mean to downturn the editing and framing of shots, but the effects definitely shove them out of the way even when they do a better job of things with angles and movement. The light adds immensely to plenty of moments, making for sweet silhouette shots and an ability to see enough details for things. The main effect you’ll be seeing is gunfire and bullet hits - which aren’t too far from standard. There’s some digital stuff in there, and for the most part I don’t think too many people are going to have it pulled over on them for it. Still, it does help with some details, like occasionally when you spot a drone in the background of a shot getting the live feed for the viewers of the death-match show. It also does make for some impressive action when things slow down, and not everything really needs to be a thousand percent real for it to be good anyways - especially when comedy and an embracing of the over the top works so well with it. We also get some X-ray shots with bones breaking that is a real neat effect, and a few explosions and plenty of slow motion shots.
And of course, we come to the final department I like to normally talk about - the audio one. This one is a sleeper hit for the audio department, and it’s been a bit of a while since I’ve had one that really stood out well for the music side of things. We get a nice rocking soundtrack in this one - but it’s not all rock. Yeah, I enjoy the heavy covers of the songs that pop up in there - for example You spin me Round. Even the non-licensed parts of the soundtrack are really fun and work well with the movie. It’s a very enjoyable soundtrack, and the actors all do a fine job of line delivery over it. The balance is well done, and there’s even a little bit of a Zealand accent in there - be a bit of a waste if we had a movie from over there that didn’t have that accent up in it! There’s also some nice game sounds getting mixed in there, which makes it much more lively.
A girl and her gun.
The acting is good, the premise is about as wacky as what appears on screen, and there’s plenty of action to back up it’s energetic soundtrack. I enjoyed this - but this is not a movie for everyone. There’s some crass humor, plenty of violence. and it’s not exactly super heavy on character development and plot. For me though, based on nothing but a picture of a man that looks about as cracked-out as you could imagine, it gave me everything I wanted. I won’t say it’s a great movie, but it’s put together plenty well enough that it’s without a doubt entertaining to me, and I’ll probably let a few of my friends know they should check it out as a nice little time killer. If you enjoyed Crank or Wanted then you’d most likely love this one as well, if you hated either of those this might be one to avoid - for me, I don’t regret watching it.