Gunpowder Milkshake review: Karen Gillan and Lena Headey assassinate all expectations
Nothing will prepare you for just how spectacularly strange and fun this neon noir gets.
- Author of Taking your Android Tablets to the Max
Karen Gillan's Eva finds herself responsible for Gunpowder Milkshake's only innocent character.
The trailer for Gunpowder Milkshake does a good job spelling out what you're in for. Karen Gillan is Eva, an epic assassin who must now keep a little girl safe. When the world she knows turns against her, she gets backup from a stunning cast of fellow gun-wielding killers including Lena Headey, Michelle Yeoh and more. It's easy to walk away from that trailer expecting John Wick with lady librarians and not much more.
What you actually get when you press play on this Netflix exclusive is a great deal more entertaining.
If you make it halfway through this movie without pausing to see if Gunpowder Milkshake was originally a comic book you'd somehow never heard of, I applaud your self control. The neon noir look and feel to this film, which takes place in no clearly defined time or place and packs thematic elements from almost too many genres and art styles to count, is just plain cool. But it doesn't come from an existing story; co-writers Navot Papashado and Ehud Lavski have built something new here. The only thing we know about the larger world this movie is set in is what we're told in the beginning: An organization called The Firm controls everything and uses fixers like Eva to handle its dirty work.
The Firm's level of actual control over the world is questionable, as both Eva and her mother Scarlet (Lena Headey) find themselves on a blacklist after unintentionally killing people who are important to rival organizations. Scarlet's accidental encounter happened 15 years in the past, forcing her to go abandon her life and young daughter to go underground. The Firm takes young Eva under its wing, raising her to be an obedient contract. Things are going super great for The Firm until Eva meets Emily (Chloe Coleman), a young girl who just lost her only parent because of Eva. In an attempt to reconcile this mistake, Eva upsets a rival of The Firm and causes turmoil on a scale that you'd think would shock a lot more people than it actually does. Apparently, chaos is common in this world.
Every person you meet in this movie, save for the innocent Emily, is somehow involved in the sprawling underground crime world. The dentist, the waitress, everyone. And, honestly, it's more fun this way. The entire world of Gunpowder Milkshake is built around violence as a default. Everywhere Eva goes, there's a special box for you to surrender a weapon, and most people are careful enough to make sure a visitor surrenders their other weapon too. The metal swivel chair in the dentist's office is bullet-resistant, Eva's sports car is bulletproof enough to make James Bond jealous and shootouts in the street are just what happens on days that end in y.
This trio kicks off one of the movie's major fight scenes.
Eva's quest to keep Emily safe turns up a notch when the crew head to The Library for help. Originally shown as a place to trade firearms, it quickly becomes clear upon Scarlet's return to her daughter's side that this place used to mean a lot more to everyone involved. The three librarians, flawlessly played by Angela Basset, Carla Gugino and Michelle Yeoh, quickly reveal themselves to be much more than gun traders. What follows is one of the more impressive fight scenes you'll see on any screen this year, as well as one of the more beautiful sets as you travel through all of the different parts of this library.
While not entirely devoid of romance or sex appeal, Gunpowder Milkshake is spectacularly absent the standard sexy murderess vibe. There's no combat scenes in nothing but a silk bathrobe or all leather outfits with plunging necklines to be found here, everyone is here to fight and look amazing without needing to use bare skin to get there. And while the word "feminist" is dropped casually into two different conversations, the film doesn't blatantly spell it out or draw attention to its entirely woman-led cast. Like the rest of the universe this movie is built on, nothing is treated as unusual about these women being so powerful and connected.
Gunpowder Milkshake is fast, direct, and honestly more fun than I expected it was going to be. It lacks the extremely serious feel of the John Wick series, and that's to its credit. Very little of the world the film is set in feels real, and as a result it's easy to suspend disbelief when something incredible happens on screen. It's fun, and doesn't ask you as the viewer to take it any more seriously than that. And as long as you go into it with that mindset, you're going to love this movie.