Ryan Reynolds and his tryst with the Deadpool movies is a well-known affair in Hollywood. It took a lot of time for Tim Miller to convince the studio to allow him to make a movie on the Merc with a Mouth starring Ryan Reynolds as the eponymous character. And his efforts were well-received by the fans, who flocked to the theatres in the thousands to watch this dark action comedy unfold on the big screens. Deadpool was a massive success. The sequel Deadpool 2, which many claims to be not as good as the original, nonetheless was a very worthy addition to the franchise. The R-Rated Dark Action Flick gave birth to a whole new genre. And now with fans eagerly waiting for Deadpool 3, there might be another contender that has the guts to challenge the highly anticipated Deadpool 3 for the throne of the genre. Presenting – Why Guns Akimbo, not Deadpool 3, should be on every superhero-action fan’s bucket list!
SPOILER ALERT: Major Spoilers for Guns Akimbo up ahead. If you still have not watched it yet, we suggest you look away….
What made Deadpool so popular was not just Ryan Reynolds’ incredible comic timing. It was also the fact that the movie essentially dared to go where nobody had ever managed to strive towards, exploring a genre that had remained neglected because the Studios all over the world believed I to be too much of a risk. Deadpool not only became the first conquistador of the dark action comedy domain, but it also thrived in it. The profanity and the violence that was romanticized in the movie gave the audience laughter and a feeling of being able to relate to it at the same time. Soon a new genre was born. And while Deadpool helped carve a niche, Guns Akimbo is what we would call for it to have made the genre bigger and better than it already was.
Two Deadpool movies were already out and the fans were craving for a third installment to the franchise. Production was underway but with the current Coronavirus Pandemic as well as the Disney-Fox merger, Deadpool’s future remained uncertain. Deadpool 3 is certainly coming but its position within the larger Disney Movie Slate is in question. It might be a little late to the party. But Outbreak or no Outbreak, fans demand entertainment when they are cooped up in their homes, nothing to do. While Deadpool 3 is a long shot, Guns Akimbo can help them get the viewer their share of violence and dark humor in appropriate amounts. We are never going to say it can replace Deadpool 3. But it is sure to make you question your judgment and force you to ask yourself – Radcliffe or Reynolds, who did it better?
We will go so far as to say that Guns Akimbo took inspiration from Deadpool itself. The Deadpool movies show blood, flying limbs, bullets, bones cracking, and eyeballs being gouged out like the events are as common in your everyday life as the morning coffee. The Merc with a Mouth was probably the inspiration for Miles, which Jason Lei Howden has fashioned after Wade Wilson. Miles is like a common man with uncommon bad luck. Like Ryan Reynolds’ Wade Wilson, he too is caught in the crossfire of the operations of a shady organization conducting illegal activities. And he is thrown right into the belly of the beats from the very beginning. That raw feeling of ambiguity and hilarious uncertainty is what makes Guns Akimbo very effective at delivering a tone and setting a pace for the movie that was only seen in the Deadpool movies.
And frankly, they do it better than Deadpool.
Miles is forced to cross paths with SKIZM, an internet streaming company that forces people to participate in a live streaming human hunting game. The movie puts Radcliffe’s Miles in near-impossible situations and he has to fight his way out, with not having enough time to lick his wounds before he finds himself in yet another terrible fix. The movie got a blessing in disguise with the Director’s move to make this movie as a Video On Demand service. That way, Guns Akimbo could get a larger reach for viewership and with the Pandemic at full swing, the majority of the world would be staying at home and bored to death, will watch it one way or another. That is a phenomenon that would not have happened if Guns Akimbo was released in the theatres.
Miles is targeted by SKIZM after he trolls them as an organization. They kidnap him, strap guns to his hands which are then nailed onto his limbs, and then let their top assassin Nix (Samara Weaving) run after him and kill him. SKIZM thinks it would be fun to see how a totally untrained and ill-equipped guy with only fifty bullets to spare, will fare against a trained assassin. Nix is ready to go through hell to kill Miles because she has been promised a new life, a clean slate, by SKIZM if she could kill Miles. Both have become unwilling pawns in a larger organization’s game.
Miles has to traverse an obstacle course which is an entire city. He cannot go to the authorities since they too are in on the fun and have been paid off by SKIZM. The entire world watches Miles as he unwillingly kills his way to freedom. Halfway along the line, Nix realizes that she too has been played by SKIZM and Miles is actually a good guy. The Keyboard warrior has no idea how to do this. Nix does but she needs some back up to get them both out of this game for good. So they join hands and together they unleash a barrage of bullets and explosions all over the streets. The duo reminds us of Deadpool 2 when Wade Wilson and Domino joined forces to make their enemies cry rivers of blood.
The action and mayhem remind us of movies like Kickass and Deadpool. Nix realizes that her family was killed by SKIZM and then a revenge subplot takes center stage. Nix and Miles go after Riktor, the head of SKIZM. This scene reminds us of the first Deadpool movie when Deadpool went after Ajax aka Francis, the antagonist in Deadpool 1. The amount of blood spilled and wounds received by Nix and Miles makes us wonder whether them still being able to stand is an indication of some sort of superpower we are missing out on. The duo takes inhuman amounts of punishment but gets the job done in the end. Their adventures are so well-received and uncanny that Miles’ artist Nova decides to make a comic book out of it, starring Miles as the titular gun trotting, wisecracking hero, with his own special costume.
In the end, Miles has become Deadpool himself.
The last Deadpool movie to be released as part of the Deadpool franchise was Deadpool 2. Starring Ryan Reynolds as the titular character, Deadpool 2 was directed by David Leitch. The official film synopsis for the movie reads:
Wisecracking mercenary Deadpool meets Russell, an angry teenage mutant who lives at an orphanage. When Russell becomes the target of Cable — a genetically enhanced soldier from the future — Deadpool realizes that he’ll need some help saving the boy from such a superior enemy. He soon joins forces with Bedlam, Shatterstar, Domino and other powerful mutants to protect young Russell from Cable and his advanced weaponry.
Directed by Jason Lei Howden, Guns Akimbo stars Daniel Radcliffe as Miles. The release date for the movie was the 27th of February 2020. The official film synopsis for the movie reads:
Miles is a video game developer who inadvertently becomes the next participant in a real-life death match that streams online. While Miles soon excels at running away from everything, that won’t help him outlast Nix, a killer at the top of her game. Miles’ (Daniel Radcliffe) nerdy existence as a video game developer takes a dramatic turn when he inadvertently gets caught up as the next contestant with SKIZM, an underground gang live-streaming real-life death matches.
