Daniel Radcliffe has been no stranger to offbeat roles since he wrapped on the Harry Potter franchise — he played a farting corpse in 2016’s Swiss Army Man — and with his new action film Guns Akimbo, the actor is entering new territory once again.
The film sees Radcliffe as an ordinary Joe who is thrust against his will into a high-stakes game where he must fight to the death; a game that is live-streamed to a bloodthirsty audience. While the premise sounds a lot like The Hunger Games or The Running Man, Guns Akimbo promises to be different by taking things to absolutely absurd heights. For instance, Radcliffe’s character has guns surgically attached to his hands in the film. And according to the Harry Potter star, it all adds up to something that’s pretty out of the ordinary.
“I think this is a film really born out of [director Jason Lei Howden]’s love of ’80s action movies; Schwarzenegger and Van Damme—and shoot-’em-up games,” Radcliffe told Deadline. “It’s like a Jason Statham movie directed by Edgar Wright. Insane action and violence, but directed in this swanky, pop-art way. It reminded me a lot of making Swiss Army Man and Horns. Every day you get to work and they would have figured out weird, cool shots that really let the cast and crew and everybody know, ‘Oh, we’re working on something that could be really, really cool.'”
During the interview, Radcliffe also mentioned the scene in the script that sold him on taking the part — and it only reinforces the kind of psychotic fever dream this movie is shaping up to be. “One of the moments I fell in love with it is, obviously, you can have somebody who has guns for hands, and it’s like, ‘OK, that’s a cool premise, but what are you going to do with that?’ Three pages into him getting the guns on for the first time, there’s a scene with him trying to negotiate how to use the toilet in his new situation,” Radcliffe revealed. “That was the moment, reading the script, where I was like, ‘OK, I love this.'”
Guns Akimbo premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 9, but as of yet has no theatrical release date. Here’s hoping it lands one soon.
