Main cast: Karen Gillan (Sam), Lena Headey (Scarlet), Carla Gugino (Madeleine), Chloe Coleman (Emily), Ralph Ineson (Jim McAlester), Adam Nagaitis (Virgil), Michael Smiley (Dr Ricky), Michelle Yeoh (Florence), Angela Bassett (Anna May), and Paul Giamatti (Nathan)
Director: Navot Papushado
Women and guns are some of the sexiest combinations ever, and Gunpowder Milkshake is one of those movies designed to capitalize on this. The whole plot of the movie can be summed up as “women shooting down men”, which is probably a fetish in some corners of the Web. Unfortunately, this one is quite the dreary mess.
Sam’s mother Scarlet was an assassin with The Firm, until Scarlet killed the son of a big shot criminal and was forced to flee, leaving Sam in the care of Nathan, the HR officer of the Firm. Today, Sam has followed her mother’s footsteps, and when the movie opens, she has to kill a few more men than expected due to bad intel during a gig. Later on, she has what seems like a simple task: get back some money stolen from the firm. In the process, she ends up taking under her wing a young girl. Well, things become even more complicated when, mirroring her mother’s situation, Sam discovered that she had killed the son of a big shot criminal. The Firm sells her out, but Sam is determined to not leave the young girl, Emily. In this, at least, she won’t be her mother.
Gunpowder Milkshake has an impressing cast, indeed, although I’d argue that Angela Bassett and Michelle Yeoh are just playing the same characters they have played many times before here. Only Carla Gugino seems to be trying, bless her. Karen Gillan has to merely look sullen and pose artfully, but that’s this movie it a nutshell: it never feels like a coherent movie. Instead, it’s more of scenes spliced together for people to generate memes on social media. Everyone poses and postures rather than acts, and dialogues resemble contrived, stilted Twitter exchanges than normal conversations.
Meanwhile, this movie doesn’t display any original concept or thought at all. Most painful is the constant use of slow-motion scenes of “intense” moments playing out with a cheery tune playing in the background. How many times do I need to see this gimmick, my goodness? Guns slotted inside hollowed-out books—how original.
Ultimately, it’s hard to gauge the quality of the acting or story because hardly any is required or present in this movie. It’s just scenes, and unoriginal, dreary ones at that. The whole result is more boring than fun.
