I suspect Daniel Radcliffe may have perfected his American accent by watching Breaking Bad. He sounds so much like Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), or indeed his Bojack Horseman character Todd, it’s eerie. In Guns Akimbo, Radcliffe’s character Miles doesn’t just sound like these guys, he’s also the lovable loser type, the sitting on his couch type, the unmotivated type. But sometimes despite your best efforts, life finds you, and it makes some demands.
Miles is sitting on his couch “trolling the trolls” as he calls it, stirring up shit with his keyboard with big bad words from an anonymous account. But when there’s a sudden pounding on his door, it seems that Miles has finally trolled the wrong troll, as the criminals behind world-wide sensation Skizm drag him into their deadly game. Skizm pits two people against each other as millions stream live to watch them fight to the death. It’s a viral murder game that Miles wants no part of, but when he wakes up with gun stigmata (guns literally bolted to his right and left hands), he doesn’t have much choice.
So we spend 90 minutes watching him get stalked by opponent Nyx (Samara Weaving), search ex-girlfriend Nova (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), try really hard not to die, and adapt to having guns for hands – which includes recruiting help from homeless crackhead Glenjamin (Rhys Darby) for every day needs such as unzipping to pee, and liking stuff on Instagram. You know, the basics.
As you might guess, Guns Akimbo is 100% about the glorification of violence and surprisingly, I’m not that mad about it, mostly because it’s pretty forthright and honest about it. You’re not going to stumble into this one thinking it might be about a close-knit family dealing with sudden onset Alzheimer’s, or a couple who find each other late in life only to have one of them die tragically and slightly heroically in their lover’s arms. No. Guns Akimbo sounds exactly like it is: bang, bang, bang2. It spends its first 5 minutes dropping hints of animation to prepare us for what’s to come. It briefly pretends to be a social commentary to justify the approaching onslaught, but honestly, who needs it? Finally, it gives up the pretense and indulges in the stylized and blood soaked violence it promised, with a fanfare of 80s pop. You’ll feel as if you’ve jumped into a video game that’s definitely rated M, though that can’t possibly stand for Mature. Maniac? Madman? Murderous rampage? You’re not here for satire or plot, you’re here to bear witness to the sheer volume of spurting GSWs, severed arteries, spent casings, and blatant disregard for human life. It is not a credit to anyone’s moral fiber and it does not improve the human spirit but it is a fun if gratuitous ride through our seediest impulses.
Other movies have gone here before – Nerve with Dave Franco and Emma Roberts was not bad if you don’t mind superficial thrills with a side dish of already outdated youth culture. These movies apparently find no irony in critiquing our voyeuristic tendencies while also capitalizing on them.
Radcliffe is fun, Weaving is a poster child for why you never bleach your eyebrows, and Darby is a welcome laugh in an otherwise very black comedy. The soundtrack, featuring “Citrus Hill” amidst covers of bright 80s tunes, provides a hyper backdrop for frenetic death and destruction. Nyx shoots from the hip, Miles tries not to shoot off his own dick, and the whole thing’s just a riot of violence and tribute to the games and shows and songs that promote it.
Spielberg lost that battle but he normally has a pretty keen eye for casting the right kid in his movies. Drew Barrymore recalls auditioning for him for Poltergeist: “lied my face off. I told him I was in a rock ‘n roll band. I was a drummer, of course, because drummers are the coolest, and that I was a cook.” He didn’t think she was right for Poltergeist but kept her in mind for something else…and that’s how she landed E.T.
about being, not about performing, the way that children often do in school plays, making something bigger. It’s not always the noisy kids that we’re looking for; it’s the quiet kids at the back.” That was very important when Weir was casting for Room, in which a 5 year old boy and his mother escape their rapist-captor. One of those quiet kids was 7-year-old Jacob Tremblay, who caught her attention fairly early in the casting process. He had the interiority Weir and director Lenny Abrahamson wanted to see. “It was very evident how gifted Jacob was,” Weir says. “He’s a really bright and inventive child.”
play games, and we took our acting coach Miranda Harcourt, who’s amazing with kids, with us. We had an interpreter, obviously, and from those groups of 10, we narrowed it down to the final list and called them back again. It was a very thorough process. It was about four months from the time they started putting people on tape in India to when they started doing callbacks, and it was long and very intense every day, with another 100 or 200 tapes coming in. You can’t miss anybody.” Eventually they paired their top two youngsters with the top two adolescents would would play the older brother, and found the right chemistry. Anyone who’s seen Lion will know that little Sunny Pawar was a particularly bright spot in the film and he really livened up the red carpets during awards season, just as Jacob Tremblay had done the year before.
The Joker: I suppose there are probably dozens of back stories as to how The Joker got his scars, but I love how Chris Nolan approaches them in The Dark Knight. The Joker himself tells several vastly different tales involving their provenance, which reveals nothing about their true nature, but tonnes about his sanity. The way he accents the scars with makeup makes us think he’s proud of them. He wants them to be noticed. Perhaps he wants us to believe they’re self-inflicted. Perhaps they are.
Tony is blasé about his scar, laughing it off, attributing it to his youth but never getting specific. It’s obviously a reminder of the past he left behind, and it’s a focal point to his enemies, something that makes him look scary and intimidating, perhaps warning them that he’s capable of violence. But in true Tony spirit, he addresses his scar only thusly: “You should see the other kid; you can’t recognize him.” I bet that’s true.
Harry Potter: Harry got his distinctive lightning-bolt scar in a failed murder attempt, when Lord Voldemort put a killing curse on him (his mother’s sacrifice saved him from death, but he would bear the mark of the attack). The scar is legendary among the magic set, and it tingles whenever the Dark Lord is near. It wasn’t just a warning system, but a link to what Voldemort was thinking and feeling – actually a small piece of his soul, yearning to escape. Which is pretty crazy.
the obvious result of learning the hard way how to live with scissors for hands. They aren’t terrible to look at, and actually give him a sympathetic look, reminding us of his hardships. Since the movie skewers conformity, Edward’s scars are just another thing that set him apart.
Marv: Sin City’s Marv puts Mickey Rourke on this list twice, ironic considering his own not-insignificant scars. In the 1990s he took up boxing, and had to have lots of reconstructive surgery as a result – two broken noses, a smashed cheekbone – but admittedly went to the wrong doctor to put things right. Finally, after massive amounts of plastic surgery, he’s starting to look good again. Regardless, in Sin City, Rourke’s face is covered in prosthetic scars. Marv is supposed to be too “ugly” to attract the opposite sex, which is why his relationship with Nancy is so pure and good, and highly cherished by him.
ow he’s defined by it, bearing its nickname.
Inigo Montoya: “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” A mysterious man with 6 fingers attacked Inigo’s father, and presumably Inigo’s scar is from that same fight. His greatest wish is to avenge his father’s death, and he spends much of The Princess Bride pursuing the man who left so many scars in his wake.
the ghost of Obi-Wan tells Luke: “When your father clawed his way out of that fiery pool, the change had been burned into him forever – he was Darth Vader, without a trace of Anakin Skywalker. Irredeemably dark. Scarred.” Those scars are kept underneath a menacing helmet for much of the series, but when that helmet comes off, oof: impact.
Javier Bardem and Jeffrey Dean Morgan: are they actually the same person?
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