Critic Reviews

Writer-director Jason Lei Howden does try to sneak social commentary into proceedings, the film satirizing reality TV and attacking the poison of online comments. But ultimately this is balls-to-the-wall action, with Guns Akimbo delivering thrills, spills and genuinely spectacular kills.

With an unhinged Weaving chewing the scenery as Nix and a perfectly cast Radcliffe doing his best to survive while also finding it impossible to keep Miles’ snarky thoughts in his brain out of his mouth, it’s hard not to be entertained.

Guns Akimbo glides on the strength of Radcliffe’s work, which is equally committed to selling a self-deprecating verbal barb as it is to executing an extended bit of physical humor.

Guns Akimbo may be too mild to be memorable, but it is a mostly satisfying time-waster.

A satire of overamped gamer culture that is itself too overamped to be much fun, Guns Akimbo takes a while before it stops showing off its virtuosity — shots that turn cartwheels, frantic cutting, an onslaught of graphics — and finds a groove.

Howden, with an able assist from editors Luke Haigh and Zaz Montana, keeps this anarchic gore fest moving at breakneck speed, but it’s a brash, crass, often mind-numbing ride.

The ingredients for an engagingly ridiculous action pic are here, but the pacing's all wrong.

Writer-director Jason Lei Howden’s humor might have been tolerable if his film was at least reasonably imaginative.

This undeniably slick, energetic contraption plays somewhere between grating and numbing.

If there is a one-word skeleton key to unlocking Guns Akimbo, it might simply be: “sloppy.”