3 Short Paragraphs: Guns Akimbo

2019, Jason Lei Howden (Deathgasm) -- download

You have to commend Daniel Radcliffe and his post-HP movie choices, as he ever continues to shed that wizard kid type-casting. He's been a romcom BF in Toronto, Igor (not eye-gor), a dead body, and even butt nekkid on stage. In this role, he's pretty much his generation: a guy in a thankless job who spends faaaaar too much time online, but at least with some benevolent flair. He's a Troll Hunter, i.e. someone who enters into chat rooms and discussion forums to go up against the boorish, insulting trolls of the Internet, with a desire to make them run away with their tails between their legs. Its commendable behaviour. In his world, which strikes me as 20 minutes into the future, the worst of online culture has evolved into an ultra-violent, ultra-illegal game where people are pitted against each other, seeking to eliminate the other permanently. Death. Perma-death. Death IRL. Yes, the online cult of personality known as Skizm has teams (or individuals) kill each other while the Internet watches. Miles (Radcliffe) gets it into his bored, drunken mind to go up against Skizm in what was probably a Discord channel, which has the worst results -- Skizm comes to HIM. The next morning, he wakes up with pistols bolted to his hand and wired to his body. Yes, guns. Now he's in the game.

Ludicrous premise, sort of a Death Race for now. But Radcliffe actually makes it work. Of course, it begins as a comedy of errors: how does he put on pants, can he tell the cops, what will the general public think of a guy running around in a bathroom literally waving gun-hands around. He is being chased by another person being manipulated by Skizm, the psychotic Nix (Samara Weaving, doing a pretty good job of being not Margot Robbie 2.0) and she is relentless. Then, Skizm makes a mistake and kidnaps Miles' ex-GF.

Sure, this movie was ridiculous. Sure, this movie was over the top. But it actually kept pure to its intent and vision, all psychedelia and lame tech commentary that it was. Miles is actually a pretty good character, in that he really doesn't want other people hurt, so he does his best to draw the bad guys away from fire whenever he can. As a film, any commentary is besides the point, for you are really just here for the violence, crass humour and inventive murder. But at least Howden does it with some style and decent flair.