Frothy Action Flick Gunpowder Milkshake Falls Flat, But in Style

Can we ever really protect our children from the violence of the world we’ve created? Gunpowder Milkshake dares to sort of pose this question, then double dares the audience to try to follow an ultra-convoluted plot that is simply an excuse to watch hot mother figures (Lena Headey, Michelle Yeoh, Carla Gugino and Angela Bassett) bash in the heads of a horde of generic hitmen. The film’s thin thread of emotional sincerity gets lost in Israeli horror director Navot Papushado’s gory venture into big-budget action. His movie favors neon lighting, intricate set pieces, slow-mo as storytelling and the squeezing of brilliant actors into minimally backstoried, fabulously outfitted cardboard characters over much in the way of development or consistency. It’s a bloody feast for the eyes, and if you’re looking for a movie sprung solely from the iconography of other neo-shoot ‘em ups, it’s got some fun in store—you just might have to leap over the plot holes and massive tonal shifts while wielding customized mini-bayonets to enjoy the good stuff.
The plot of Gunpowder, named for the drink its protagonist nostalgically enjoys after a grueling kill (and evoking Twin Peaks on Winding Refn fumes with the diner where she typically enjoys it), is basically nonessential if you’re doing anything other than reading a review. Contract killer Sam (an inexplicably American-accented Karen Gillan) takes after her long-disappeared assassin mother Scarlet (a breezily British Headey) by shooting the head of a competing shadowy hitman’s guild’s only son. Through a convoluted retrieval of unrelated stolen property, she also orphans precocious eight-year-old Emily (Chloe Coleman), who becomes her own determined protégé. By choosing to rescue Emily rather than save the client’s money, and by shooting the wrong person at the wrong time (unrelated incidents that somehow mush together into the same crimson impetus), Sam puts herself squarely in the crosshairs of The Firm, the collective of powerful moneyed men who had previously employed and protected her.
Midway through the film, after twice battling three mercenary “boneheads” sent to even the Firm’s score—utilizing medical tape to form a pretty frickin’ fun Sam KnifeAndGunHands gag that will give physicists psychic headaches—and teaching Emily a quick “how to drive on the lap of the woman you barely know in order to escape more featureless hitmen shooting directly at you” lesson, Sam, Emily and the already too-long two-hour film finally makes its journey to the main attraction. Inexplicably, Sam finds her mother after fifteen years of abandonment, and three generations of misfit fatales make their way to the Library, the only safe home they’ve ever known.