‘Gunpowder Milkshake’ could pass for the typical slipstream action film of the ‘John Wick’ wave that we are experiencing, and it truly owes a significant debt to that cinematic universe that precedes it, entering the same bag of unreal and very violent action cinema which follows a trail like ‘Atomic’ (Atomic Blonde, 2017) or ‘Nobody> itself (Nobody, 2021) which premiered a few months ago.
However, its directors, Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado, the same ones behind the famous ‘Big Bad Wolves’ (2013), play with the neon aesthetic codes that characterize these works and move a step beyond the “bixesual lighting” of cold and warm lights to provide the set of a much more varied visual richness, which not only plays with lighting, but with a colorful, fantastic costume design full of information about the characters, as well as an art direction of neonoir pop.
A leading lady with a luxury cohort
It should not be noted that in this case it is a group exclusively of women who delight in the violence they inflict, and to some extent it is the non-superheroic —and fun— version of ‘Birds of Prey’ (Birds of Prey, 2019) , also in terms of his use of color, but his baroque conception of the plane is not necessarily so excessive and is more in tune with another film with Margot Robbie almost hidden, the gloomy ‘Terminal’ (2018), although the formal finish and tone has more to do with Russian pranks like ‘Why do not you die?‘(Papa, sdokhni, 2018).
The idea is that here the protagonists are so bright, wild and deadly like any of their male film counterparts, and for this they are embodied by a cast of black label with veterans such as Angela Bassett, Michelle Yeoh, Lena Headey and Carla Gugino next to the already consecrated Karen gillan. In this case they do not focus exclusively on hand-to-hand punch fights but have a blast shooting gangsters in the face and using very unlikely weapons that give the whole an incorrect and hilarious ‘scratch and itch’ character.
Like the vast majority of this new wave of hyperbolic and hypervitaminized action cinema, its plot is fine as paper and follows a deadly assassin who works for a mysterious organization known as The Firm, just as her mother did before her. A life of violence that does not prevent her from having a code of honor that she must deal with when the life of the eight-year-old daughter of a man she kills is in danger, getting into a mess that puts her in the spotlight and her He does search for his mother and the squad of female assassins that used to be a big part of his life.
Baroque splatstick and without putting the safety
The story becomes the least of it when the propelling energy of ‘Gunpowder Milkshake’ is the sKaffir sense of humor, full of sarcasm built on montage, blows and jets of hemoglobin, proposing a lesson in charisma through the fantastic female protagonists that we follow in front of a whole group of low-level criminals who, often, represent their stereotypes very well only with details of clothes or hairstyles that say more than any gender manifesto that seeks to justify its nature with Manichean trauma victims that victimize the protagonists.
‘Gunpowder Milkshake’ is, in essence, a collection of highly stylized and highly entertaining fight sequences, which add up to a good number of creative ways to shoot, stab and kick despicable enemies in a variety of fabulous settings ranging from a coffee shop requiring patrons to leave their weapons on the doorstep to a library with stunt-filled sections and titles meaning, they laugh at the clichés of female literary tastes, giving a new meaning to what it means to read Jane Austen.
This secret organization with gadgets and cartoon ideas has both the ‘Kingsman’ movies or Mortadelo comics as well as the criminal cinema of the 2000s, and is never afraid to make fun of itself, with scenes as crazy as the one at the dental clinic, with Sam with paralyzed hands, up a getaway in a garage that mixes the precise montage of ‘Baby Driver’ (2018), with a use of the silences typical of the prologue of ‘Drive’ (2011), only with an insane, charming and daring twist by whoever is at the wheel that takes us to the time of ‘Secret game‘(Cloak & Dagger, 1984).
More than a set of graceful choreographies
Carla Guigno, Angela Bassett and Michelle Yeoh have a great time as the three killer librarians but most of the footage has Gillan finishing his evolution into an action movie star, with fabulous moments, like the bowling alley, in which he gives a delusional I use a panda-shaped suitcase for kids. Headey takes a few glances to flood the screen and when the group comes together on screen it is cathartic, especially with the incredible musical use, with perfect choices as Janis Joplin at the height of the film.
Like ‘Nobody’, there is an incorrect passion for blood to which a lot of gore is added (not always digital) typical of genre cinema, with planes of brains flown in slow motion within shots in constant movement that in some moments become real tableaux vivants Renaissance, full of details and simultaneous events in the second and third planes, to which you want to return as soon as the film is finished.
‘Gunpowder Milkshake’ may not quite convince those seasoned fans of choreography full of stuntmen and blows, but it manages to go beyond that adrenaline-pumping concept of video club cinema to achieve a more harmonious balance between action, violence and visual narrative language, which is nourished both by the chemistry of its protagonists and the meticulous care of space and locations, a whole badass party without composure that strives to turn its spectacle of gratuitous violence into a generous feast of milkshake full of cream and toppings for the eyes .