Gunpowder Milkshake | Film Review

A marked, solo-assassin that no one can take down, a neon-colored backdrop, tons of shoot-outs, and a depressing backstory… Sound familiar? Surprise! Nope, this is not a John Wick review. This is Gunpowder Milkshake.

Gunpowder Milkshake’s Scarlet (Lena Headey, Game of Thrones) is forced to abandon her teenage daughter, Sam (Karen Gillan, Avengers), to her handler (Paul Giamatti) when Scarlet’s life as a professional assassin goes awry. Years later and despite the contention Sam has for Scarlet, Sam is following in her mother’s shoes as an assassin with “The Firm” until she deviates from an assigned mission, causing Emily (Chloe Coleman), an innocent 8-year-old girl, to be caught in the middle of a war. In order to keep Emily safe, the now-marked Sam goes rogue and must reunite with her mother and the “sisterhood” (of the traveling gun-slingers).

In the right hands, this could have been wildly successful and fun – especially with a cast as loaded as this one. Unfortunately, Ehud Lavski and Navot Papushado’s painful script makes it anything but watchable. The dialogue is consistently cheesy and over-the-top, the story itself feels incredibly forced, and there is almost no real investment in convincing audiences of the character choices. Now, when I say the dialogue is bad, I mean that I’m convinced Lavski and Papushado worked with Tommy Wiseau to write it up. If you’re looking for a bad movie drinking night, maybe Gunpowder Milkshake is for you.

The biggest wins come from this stacked cast. Karen Gillan can pretty much pull off any character type thrown her way and she convinces me that she’d make an excellent assassin if she ever needed a career change. The aforementioned sisterhood is made up of Lena Headey, Carla Gugino, Michelle Yeoh, and Angela Bassett – the latter three of which are arms dealers apparently dressed like they’re heading to an audition for the Powerpuff Girls later.  The misstep here is that they are all underutilized and misused; Yeoh, Bassett, and Gugino delivering exhaustingly endless book analogies for their enclosed weapons. Yeah, it’s cute and funny — the first time. Sigh.

And lest we forget our dear Giamatti and Coleman. Giamatti’s acting is everything we know it to be and Coleman is just as charming as every other appearance we’ve seen her in. However, both of their characters experience drastic mindset changes without any true explanation or buy-in from viewers. It is beyond frustrating to see these talented actors subjected to lame character development, Giamatti more so.

Among the fantastic cast is also a beautifully aesthetic production. The stunts were entertaining, even a couple kills that make you audibly shout, and the lighting sets the ambience for the scenes. There is actually a fairly clever and fun car chase scene where Sam and Emily pair up to drive a bulletproof car.

How anyone can take a $30 million budget and some of the best actresses in Hollywood, and turn it into “meh”, is beyond me. With as much content as there is these days, do yourself a favor and find something else. Gunpowder Milkshake is in fact not bringing all the boys to the yard.

Gunpowder Milkshake comes to Netflix on July 14, 2021
Starring Karen Gillan, Lena Headey, Paul Giamatti, and Chloe Coleman
Screenplay by Ehud Lavski and Navot Papushado
Directed by Navot Papushado