Daniel Radcliffe enjoyed balancing extreme violence with "physical comedy".
The ‘Guns Akimbo’ star plays mild mannered Miles Cassonva who gets kidnapped and revived with guns bolted to his hands in a world where morbid online underground group ‘skism’ casts random strangers in fights to the death.
He told Variety: "I feel like it was such a fun and exciting script, it had this insane idea in the middle of it that was really fully explored.
"It’s not just a device for crazy fight scenes, having guns for hands. It’s also a device for a lot of physical comedy that I really enjoyed. ‘How do you dress yourself, how do you pick up your phone, how do you go through life,’ which [director and writer Jason Lei Howden] practiced very early on."
Howden admitted he had a very hands-on approach to the concept when it came to figuring out the practicalities.
He laughed: "I got water pistols and taped them to my hands and I spent a day just going around my flat, [just asking] ‘How do I go to the toilet?’ "
There was also a delicate balance to be found between the skism’s extreme violence, and making sure he didn’t push things too far in that direction.
Asked how he solved that potential problem, he added: "You approach is with a certain ‘Looney Tunes’ cartoony-ness. For me, that takes away from the blow a bit.
"No one wants to watch real life violence. When the news comes on, I can’t watch that stuff. I can’t even watch those medical shows… You reach a point where it goes so over-the-top where it’s not realistic."
Daniel Radcliffe loved pairing extreme violence with physical comedy
