There’s a point in Gunpowder Milkshake where everything clicks and the film begins to live up to the craziness of its title, branching away from becoming another run of the mill John Wick impersonator. A hallway skirmish with a twist: our hero has been dosed with a muscle relaxant ahead of her fight with a trio of beaten-up wheelchair-bound and crutch-dependent goons. It’s where a unique sense of levity and absolute insanity takes form like a shot of adrenaline, propelling the film towards an absolute bloodbath of a finale. The characters and general plot might not be anything new, but you’ve never seen girls kick ass like this before.
Abandoned as a child by her mother and infamous assassin Scarlet (Lena Headey), Sam (Karen Gillan) has turned to a life of crime herself, following in her mother’s footsteps as a one-woman cleanup crew for The Firm, a mysterious group of men with their fingers in all the pies of the underworld. When a mission goes awry and Sam is forced to exact a bloody massacre – including the murder of crime lord Jim McAlister’s (Ralph Ineson) son – a target is placed on her head, prompting her handler at the Firm, Nathan (Paul Giamatti) to send her on a new mission to recover lost funds while he can soothe McAlister. When this run-of-the-mill mission takes a turn and Sam finds herself a babysitter to recently orphaned Emily (Chloe Coleman) and on the run from McAlister, she must turn to Madeleine (Carla Gugino), Florence (Michelle Yeoh) and Anna May (Angela Bassett) of the sisterhood of assassins that raised her for help clearing her name.
Style is the name of the game here for director Navot Papushado, but not at the expense of substance, centering the emotional core around Sam’s abandonment issues with her mother and the maternal role she takes on for the freshly orphaned Emily. The film takes a while to get to this point, taking its time setting up the world of the Firm and the Diner, a location that acts in the same way as the Continental hotel from John Wick – a gun-free meeting place for underworld figures. This introduction skews closely to the model of Keanu’s franchise, but stands out with a hyper-stylised flair; with rich neon lights filling the screen and endlessly badass and over-the-top introductions to all the key players.
Gillan proves she can easily lead her own action-intensive franchise having graduated from Marvel, channelling her character of Nebula from that franchise into Sam; her low, matter-of-factly menacing tone delivering statements of warning before preceding to kick ass. It’s almost impossible not to compare her to Wick and in that sense the characters are set up in much the same way: vague, mysterious individuals that endear the audience through their actions and the unfortunate situations they are put in rather than through their boisterous personalities.
We care about Sam because she is constantly put in the thick of things and scraps her way out, fighting to stick with Emily like her mother never did with her. All the supporting players around her – Coleman, Gugino, Basset and Yeoh – are great; each with their own distinct personalities and styles that make them a ton of fun to watch in combat, but Headey is the standout; effortlessly cool slaughtering dozens of men but completely inept at actually communicating and making amends with her daughter. Similarly, again to Wick, is Ineson’s villain; a means to an end to allow for all sorts of bloody shenanigans as Sam and her friends mercilessly plow through his men in gloriously violent fashion.
Where the style meets that substance so well is in the action. It’s exquisitely shot and the stunning fight choreography is always given the chance to shine, with slow, long pans allowing the audience to see every punch thrown and kick delivered – no shaky cam here. The muscle relaxant fight is easily the highlight, with so many inventive and darkly comical moments that would be out of place in other, more serious films, but feel right at home in this strange mish-mash of tones. The characters are all deadly serious but the action is so fervently ridiculous and insane that it is impossible not to get caught up in the macabre fun of it all. The grand finale is a huge explosion of more brilliantly choreographed chaos – worthy of a film with Gunpowder in the title – but it doesn’t quite live up to the earlier bout in terms of inventiveness.
Gunpowder Milkshake is a colourful, chaotic blend of highly stylised action, engaging leads with a genuinely compelling emotional arc and a stellar female supporting cast, much like the beverage it is named after. While it apes John Wick for a brief time to set things up, it soon explodes into its own weird and wonderful cocktail of colour and carnage, moving from one outstanding action sequence to the next. If action films are intent to follow in the footsteps of Keanu’s opus, Gunpowder Milkshake has all the right ingredients to stand out from the crowd – and it slaps a bright red cherry on top.
Gunpowder Milkshake stars Karen Gillan, Lena Headey, Carla Gugino, Michelle Yeoh, Angela Bassett, Chloe Coleman, Ralph Ineson, Michael Smiley & Paul Giamatti – In Australian cinemas now and streaming on Netflix in the US.