Daniel Radcliffe has certainly taken an interesting path in his career since his time as Harry Potter. Overall, I'm very grateful for his willingness to try very random, weird movies (and TV shows) that try interesting things, and I hope that he long continues. This movie, like many of those, takes some chances, and some of them work out, and others don't really.
It's a movie in what I have started to think of as the Crank Cinematic Universe (from the "incredible" Jason Statham movie of that name). If reminded me of no movie such much as Mayhem, another movie that like this one features Samara Weaving as the Main Girl (should we check on her? is she ok? is this what she likes?) - although I think Mayhem does it a little better. What are the collective traits of movies like this?
Well, it is an action movie, undoubtedly. But not like Mission Impossible, or a Superhero movie; it tries to set a distinct visual style for itself, in a way that Zack Snyder might on his better days (a la 300) or Alex Garland might (in a movie like Dredd). And I don't just mean slow motion; it has a certain frenetic energy, including the way it works with cuts, and costumes, and everything else that makes up the aesthetic whole.
These movies also take a specific wild premise to force the main character into permanent non-stop action, whether it's the Adrenaline Drug of Crash, the Twitch Stream Hunt of this one, or Rage Virus of Mayhem. There is no way they can ever be allowed to stop and just do things at even the pace of a normal action film. This ties into the aesthetics to a certain degree, naturally, as well.
The last major thing they need is to be a bit whimsical and comedic; none of these movies take themselves even slightly seriously, nor should they, despite the grotesque and serious nature of everything happening on screen. It's not quite the B movie sense that everything in this is kind of intentionally unserious (although it is), but a half-step up from that into explicit joking of a comedy that is actually presenting as a comedy, although still leaning enough into being an action movie full-time that it isn't really a true Comedy Movie either.
Anyway, it has all these traits, but ultimately it is just kind of okay and while it doesn't fail in any of these regards, it doesn't really excel at any of them either (through no fault of Danny R). I just wish it was a little closer to a great Guy Ritchie film than it is to Gamer.
Score: 5/10
IMDb: Guns Akimbo
PS: The outcome of his poor friend felt unnecessarily cruel. I mean, plenty of cruel actions take place the whole movie, but that is the only one where the film itself felt like it was being cruel to the viewer, and it actually felt pretty out of character.
PPS: I am going to assume the choice "You Spin Me Round" as one of their dank dissonant movie covers (a popular trend in these tongue-in-cheek action movies, always, even though Guardians of the Galaxy has probably ruined it for a while by making it so central) is a reference to the beloved guys at Auralnauts and you can't stop me: YouTube
