It feels short-sighted to refer to something as a John Wick rip-off given that John Wick was ripping off so many films before it that were in turn ripping off so many before that, and so on and so on, but the success of the Keanu-led franchise has had an extraordinary, and increasingly exhausting, effect on the action genre. For actors of a certain ilk and often of a certain age, wanting your own Taken quickly became needing your own John Wick, a reinvigorating chance to break loose, have fun and, ideally, secure a decade’s worth of escalating pay cheques.
Films about assassins have become as boringly commonplace as films about superheroes (if not more so given the slimmer budgets attached) and so, no matter what the new sheen might be, there’s an inevitable been-here-seen-that overfamiliarity that comes with any new attempt. In Netflix’s kitschy shoot-em-up Gunpowder Milkshake (to be released outside of the US theatrically and in the UK on Sky Cinema later this year), the USP is related to gender – the five main killers are all female – but it’s one that would have been more persuasive had women been involved behind the camera too. Unlike Black Widow or Birds of Prey or other recent films that have tried to redress a longstanding genre imbalance, this is purely the work of two men (writer-director Navot Papushado and co-writer Ehud Lavski) and while they do an efficient job at nailing the beats of their by-the-numbers yet propulsive plot, a lived-in specificity is missing that could have elevated the material or at least the dialogue, which is passable at best and rote at worst. It coasts on energy, of which thankfully there’s plenty, but it’s haunted by the faint echo of what could have been.
In Papushado’s aggressively neon-lit, arguably overstylised, universe, we meet Sam (Karen Gillan), a loner who spends her days killing whomever she’s told to by the same shadowy organisation her mother Scarlett (Lena Headey) used to work for. Sam was abandoned 15 years ago but when she ends up in trouble, Scarlett reappears and the pair must take on a criminal underbelly together.
If the barebones of Gunpowder Milkshake sound a little dug up then even the flesh that’s been added gives off a musty whiff, from the double-crossing bosses to the fetishistic obsession with guns to the eye-rolling decision to humanise an assassin with the addition of a cute child, a particularly tiresome genre trope. But while there’s barely a second you won’t be able to predict, films such as this live and die by the quality of their action set pieces rather than their inventive plotting and Papushado is, if nothing else, a skilled stage manager. The bright, flashy aesthetic means that the sequences have a rare easy-to-follow clarity often missing in the murk of other action films and while the downside is that this often highlights the budgetary restrictions, it makes for an undeniably immersive experience. The almost two-hour runtime is a little overambitious given the thinness of the material but Papushado overstuffs his film with action, appealing to thirsty Friday night audiences eager for non-stop spectacle (a deftly shot diner shootout in the final act is particularly impressive).
The graphic novel-inspired world of Gunpowder Milkshake isn’t unique, but it’s admirably committed and Papushado edges his film away from the danger of pastiche thanks to an equally committed cast. Gillan is an incredibly adept action performer but is overshadowed by her elders, with Headey making for a commanding mother (if a confusing one, given the 14-year age difference in real life) and small but impactful turns from Angela Bassett, Carla Gugino and Michelle Yeoh filling out the cast. Bassett in particular is a joy, still enthusiastically riding a deserved career resurgence, strong enough for us to crave her as the lead of an action thriller all of her own rather than in support yet again. Shot in Berlin, set in a fictional unnamed city and featuring a number of British actors with clumsy American accents, the film is a little jarring at times, as unreal as a video game but perhaps best taken as one, its cartoonish flourishes then easier to allow.
Predictably, we’re left with an open ending, the prospect of more to come on the way, a new series waiting to be milked. There are certainly worse potential franchises on the horizon but next time, it would be nice if there was something a little unexpected added to the blender.
Gunpowder Milkshake is now available on Netflix in the US and will be released in UK cinemas and on Sky Cinema on 17 September
