Gunpowder Milkshake
Salt. Red Sparrow. Atomic Blonde. Ava. Black Widow. Birds of Prey. Captain Marvel.
Geoff is throwing in the towel and reviewing commercial products. Hello, welcome one and all to my reunion with reality. Pre-emptive spoilers warning; this is a review that shies away from professionalism which might just entertain you even if you hate these kinds of movies. There’s a ‘You Will Like This Movie If You Like’ at the end to give yourself a gauge.
I got so tired of thinking hard that I’ll probably not go back. This is my final gambit and my last remaining ruse. If this fails I’ll accept my fate and retire from the creative field of combat to write storybooks for children who have no mind for lying and generally give honest feedback along the lines of calling you a loser and judging you guilty of being a Debbie-downer.
In Sum It Has a Lot of Guns
As far as female empowerment movies go it’s good. However I still can’t shake how big the guns are in their hands. Michelle Yeoh looks like my nephew in kindergarten when she’s packing an M-16, Angela Bassett makes a sawed-off Mossberg look like an elephant gun and Karen Gillan never should have been given a handgun over 9mm’s. Kudos to the minigun and G3 sniper rifle; no suspension of disbelief necessary. The movie’s still good but only because of the milkshakes.
I haven’t seen the superhero female empowerment movies because I don’t need to and I’ll never watch Red Sparrow because I know it’s bad but I had to start up Atomic Blonde and Ava to realize how terrible they were so Salt is the only family Gunpowder Milkshake has left. Angelina Jolie is no fucking joke, okay. That woman co-starred against Brad Pitt…and married him. Talk about a female empowerment shoot ’em up that’s actually good; Mr and Mrs Smith turns me on.
Recently I watched The Bad Batch (Not the Disney one, Disney doesn’t do cannibalism) and loved it a whole lot and Mad Max Fury Road is still one of my favorites to come out in the last ten years. What I note in both of those—but also Gunpowder Milkshake—is that the best action stars are stoics for the express purpose of keeping themselves from exploding into tears. All the filmmakers have to give us is the simple bare necessities; person is sad and alone and surrounded by bad guys. Now bring it to life.
Show Me the Pain in Your Heart
The movie’s action is legitimately it’s worst part. The characters (baring the super librarian squad) carry it the whole nine yards. It follows that usual formula of hiring some god-tier supporting actor (Paul Giamatti) to bulk up the awe inspiring qualities of the hero we’ve only just met and totally should consider an equal but the thing is I like Sam just because she’s Sam. This girl gets established from square one in a visual universe that’s stunning; my jaw dropped from how good it looks (barring the slowmo action sequences).
Primarily; she’s a daughter. Secondarily; she’s a bit flat. Tertiarily; she gets surrounded by bad guys because these movies work like that. There’s something so heartbreaking about that. The movie does it’s absolute most to sell it in a world that is, in no doubt, built entirely around milkshakes. The motif of every room pops. I feel sad for everyone that made those sets and framed those shots and lit those angles because it wasn’t on screen long enough. All Sam had to do was stand there and look sad.
This movie is a vibe without going too far into the vibe. Drive breathes the neon haze in so deep it dies. Cat in the Hat and The Grinch burn your retinas. If you’re going to do grounded realism you have to make it interesting at least like the Jason Bourne movies. I almost want to call Gunpowder Milkshake comic book because the dialogue is adequately plain and the comedy and characters are adequately visual and the plot is super neat and tidy with a bow on top (literally at the end she has a bow in her hair).
I guess it’s more accurate to call it akin to A Series of Unfortunate Events with guns. So cut out all the theater crap and heavy wit to replace it with teary eyes and loud shouting amid muzzle flashes in neo-retro kitsch. These people aren’t the type to get bogged down in formalities; the sleeves get rolled up and the sets get destroyed but also the musical choices keep your head even enough when some action movies blow their tops a bit too much. The soundtrack is mostly time-proven oldies but it’s original tracks tinkle with whimsy and pantomime pageantry. It’s murder with heart.
Basically all of it is a personal case of mother-bear maulings starting from the first scene and even the big bad has it soft for them technically; he’s torn. There’s a DNA of wholesomeness somewhere deep down in this movie and it surfaces everywhere. Actually scratch that; half it’s lineage is story book. It radiates a feeling of security even despite it’s plot turns because fate couldn’t dare and love is spoken for. Crap, I keep losing track of it; now I realize it’s very western. A winding tale of fateful chance that entrusts the life of a little girl to trained killers in a last stand extravaganza.
My fulfillment of childhood dreams rating for Gunpowder Milkshake: 7 out of 10.
It’s a very unique and interesting blend giving it a palpable identity although not easily categorized. It basically defined it’s own genre in it’s very title; Gunpowder Milkshake. As such there’s one little plot element that stuck me in my side as something they should have clipped; two members of the dream team super girl squad have signature engraved weaponry; akimbo bayonet pistols and a silver hatchet with bomb-ass dragon accents the kids will love. It really struck me as goofier than the tone should have gone and made me think the rest of the weapon-set got left on the cutting room floor. I don’t think the movie needs to do superheroes too on top of everything; mothers already are superwomen.
All Puff, No Chuff
I’ve developed a deep-rooted allergy to those bygone ways of expository lines of questioning. When a movie can get you from A to B without having to explain I’m beyond grateful. Oddly this seems like a practice mostly reserved for small-fries; when you get into mass audiences you have to lower your expectations and make it explicit if the plot is in any way beyond the common experience but because Gunpowder Milkshake grounds itself in it’s criminal conspiracy and protect the little brat plot threads—which are the oldest of old reliables in movie conventions—it attempts to get by flying blind. I can’t remember anyone pointing at a map or needing a moment to think, thanks be to God. Every character has simple Earthly motives in simple Earthly lives but it is a little bit hectic and garbled in it’s world building so you can get lost.
The girls are color-coded and Sam transitions out of her emo phase (referred to as her blue period) into youthful makeshift digs ala Kill Bill + every visually told hero’s journey ever. The trenchcoat definitely hid Karen Gillan’s unmistakably girlish qualities that make her a taste for some and a flashback for others but the bowling jacket embraces them entirely along with the reappearance of her long lost mother played by Lena Headey with a strange hair-do meant to age her fifteen years. There’s no hope of capturing this movie in prose without either a run-on sentence or being extremely verbose. I’m praying I can do both.
The male henchmen will stick in your mind better than name-brand actors ever could because they’re charming and somewhat adorable with their boyish threats of injury and death. Their hijinks universally lead them astray because they’ve all been misguided since a young age and made it to a senior age where it’s too late to develop a brain—especially in such an enabling environment. Their send-offs to the grave are all oddly touching and sentimental because the movie really needed them to remain alive so it could shine. It’s like all the lights have gone out in the world and we’re alone in the void without our baby boys. Leave it to The Firm to be stony in their disapproval—denying us any sign of the pain in their collective soul inflicted by the cruel fate of duty. They literally don’t say anything the whole movie.
I’m being haunted by vague memories of that series of pin-up poses called a movie, Sucker Punch, because Gunpowder Milkshake is like that movie after it’s gotten itself off the drugs and into a halfway sustainable life and has finally started remembering what it is to enjoy life but only through the fog of those “friends” you still have hanging around that you’ll soon be removing yourself from permanently. It’s like we’re watching Hollywood actress’ escape from the twisted mind (and probing hands) of Harvey Weinstein in real time—tearing free from the culture incarnate which tells them being hot and suggestible is all we’d ever want. (Fuck, I’m such a great ally.)
The humor steers almost entirely away from sexual but does the usual action movie trope of gaslighting us about the existence of PTSD; everyone’s just a fucking tank of one-liners and honor-based gun battles. Like sure maybe they’re all getting eaten up inside and they’re putting on a happy face but discount Adrien Brody really got done dirty and those girls are smiling about it. I think the movie’s star studded cast is a little bit privileged in how much the narrative forgives their own transgressions. When the nice librarian lady steps up to the bar and has her glam moment at death’s door it’s almost like a statement about how everything beautiful gets dragged into the mud and sullied by the mad dogs of society but the movie can’t slow down to let you feel it. It just gets trampled in the stampede of scenes. (Plus we’re forgetting she’s an arms dealer allied to a band of merry female murderers.)
Now it’s time for some real talk okay? This is a serious review for a serious movie about a serious issue. I’m a kindred spirit of the feminists in that I share in the inherent insanity of the self-critical female mind but the problem is I’m a dude and I like being a dude and my insecurities make me feel attacked. I’m just way too good at recognizing how bad at life I am. That can really send me into some wack ass loops and at times I make the mistake of not going to sleep when I really should go to sleep because self-examination is a full-time gig. I get that men need to be better but where’s the answer when everything’s in my head?
The pitfall of critical thought is that it’s energy intensive bullshit and all I’m trying to do in this review is enjoy something as much as I can because I did enjoy myself watching this movie and writing about it is how I get my own taste of empowerment. Working on my own projects isn’t fun—at all—but bullshitting about other people’s successful projects is incredibly fun.
My live and let live rating for Gunpowder Milkshake: 8 out of 10.
Fucking-A. I know what it’s like to have to bullshit about unsuccessful projects. Oh God. Don’t ever make me do that again. Pipe-dreams are depressing. I don’t have the intellect, emotional grounding or training for writing fiction but I do it anyways because I’m a freak. This movie is an inspiration to me. I salute you. Sam will no doubt end up on my vision board.
Please Don’t Hurt Me There
I knew the crotch kick was coming when I clicked play and I don’t even groan when I see it anymore. Perhaps the first time seeing it on film I groaned sympathetically because I myself was once crotch kicked in elementary school but from then on it was from how dull these fight scenes are and now I can barely even keep myself awake. Fury Road did it all on wheels; it was very innovative and refreshing (funny considering how dusty the movie is). Giving stuntmen too much screen time turns me off.
There’s something positively mythological about characters and there’s something positively immersion breaking about a person that’s clearly a worse character than everyone else. Star Wars had it’s TR8TOR moment so Gunpowder Milkshake had to have Mr. Sledgehammer. Sorry bud; A beard with accompanying man-bun is not a personality no matter how hunky you are. Really should have taken some tips from crusty bangs guy; he’s the real deal. The movie has some standout secondary characters. I guess one flop can be forgiven but the bald red-shirts are boring. (And I just love the throwaway kidnappers because their masks are positively scummy and their antics are adequately brainless.)
The fight choreography and how it’s shot just doesn’t really do it for me. I can see the actors doing their own stunts and I can see the intent but it just looks a little silly (but maybe that’s the point). This is no Oldboy (or Bourne—even as choppy as it’s edited). It’s really hard, if not impossible, to find an action movie that gets every element right. I watched Jupiter Ascending and it’s plot is unspeakably bland but there’s a series of fight scenes in a Chicago-ish cityscape and skyline that blew my socks off just enough to not forget that movie forever.
My private and inexpressible feelings of awe and admiration rating for Gunpowder Milkshake: 4 out of 10 if I forget all the comedy.
Perhaps I’m being unfair; I did watch it well after my bedtime and then stayed up even further to write this. The fights are fun just like they’re supposed to be and the inter-cutting of the separate showdowns is adequately climactic but it’s an unusual combo between the gore, violence and whimsy. There’s this soft spot that keeps getting exposed but everyone in the room has pistols and bladed weaponry. It’s really putting me off balance.
The Epistemology of Height in Action Stars
We might believe that all men are beautiful and we might know it’s true that intimidation is something of a physical art but knowledge reveals that action stars always stand eye to eye until it becomes a character’s gag. The systematic distortion of reality by our media industry is no doubt responsible for our general surprise in taking stock minus the puppet-master’s lens. Humans land all over the playing field, every victory is relative and you never know what room you’re going to walk into.
We measure the world relative to ourselves so when we accept someone else’s perspective we leave our grounding and lose track of what everything actually is. If I could watch all movies in VR I would because they’re a monstrous lie that all people can see things through the same eyes. This, I think, explains why I hate movies that don’t put their characters together enough. I don’t even know what this world is if I don’t know how the elements of the world relate to each other. I want to see how they fit.
So I’ve googled the heights of the stars in Gunpowder Milkshake and look at my surprise. The girl squad has something of a height coordination going on; that co-star makes your butt look big! I’m abso-fucking-lutely certain they had funny conversations about this but the casting might be intentional.
Karen Gillan 5’ 11”
Paul Giamatti 5’ 9”
Lena Headey 5’ 5”
Carla Gugino 5’ 5”
Michelle Yeoh 5’ 4”
Angela Bassett 5’ 4”
Tall female leads have their own particular needs. When you can measure up to the biggest baddies out there new possibilities open up and I’m sure the stunt doubles only get more gnarly. There’s a reason most acrobats are short stacks; it keeps you alive. I have a conspiracy theory that Tom Cruise still does his own stunts not because he’s hardcore but simply because he’s inherently more durable than most men at 5’ 7”. Off the top of my head I recall Keanu Reeves having a major back injury during The Matrix and he’s 6’ 1”. Plus I nearly threw mine out brushing my teeth once and I’m only 26. There’s only one benefit to being tall; disguising the size of your dick. It just gets lost in there and then, BOOM, one day they find out. Tall girls have a benefit too; women the world over are jealous of that slimming effect. Tall girls are thriving on high body fat and muscles just tend to pop. We have the meat. Yes please! I love 40% more value for my purchase. You can only have one girlfriend.
My height conscious rating for Gunpowder Milkshake: Concerned out of 10.
Karen Gillan doesn’t have the laws of nature on her side and she doesn’t appear adequately built for a life of danger; be it fictional or on the sound stage. Sam’s mother says it herself, “Is anything broken? Are you bleeding? … Bleeding on the inside?” As Sam turns herself in a circle like an overgrown teen that hasn’t recovered their zest for life yet. This just reminds me of how much I like the non shooty-shooty parts.
I interrupt this messaging to humbly suggest that you might share this review. Entertainment is a social medium that prides itself on being relatable. Perhaps I might even meet a girl and fall in love.
I’d Rather Not Mention
The movie’s still flawed even amid it’s strong suits. The eight year old isn’t a convincing eight year old. My aforementioned five year old nephew is a more convincing eight year old. Sometimes people struggle with kid dialogue and that makes me wonder if they’ve never had kids, are bad at writing, or kids in other families just talk dumber than in mine. Kids are a really hard balance to hit and most writers fall into over-precocious or over-naive when reality is kids do the best they can. (Study Steven Spielberg, ET in particular)
However…thinking about it the kid kitsch is probably intentional and a part of it’s humor. There’s no way to haul a realistic kid around a city from kidnapping to gunfight to murder to showdown without them breaking down and crying the entire time. Realistically speaking this girl was psychologically broken and recast into the mold of a sociopath in the events of one night and that should be more horrific than anything. But within the ethos of the world these are actually the nicest most loving people available to her and she’s a huge fan of strong self-sufficient mother-figures that’ve taken a stand against the patriarchal goliath that steamrolls families and love alike.
“Are you a serial killer?” the little girl asks.
“No, little eight year old girl, let me explain the philosophical motivations of my life choices and then you can make up your own mind about whether or not you should shun and shame me along with the rest of society.”
“Wow. Now that I’ve truly stepped into your shoes I can see that you’ve been driven by your need for survival and long term deprivation from a stable family environment. I’d like to be your apprentice and in exchange I’ll rekindle the blackness of you and your associate’s hearts.”
The movie really does make sense if you’re down for it but the key is you have to be down for it because 25-50% of everything it’s pitching gets lost in translation or blows past in the moment you looked away to have a laugh at the movie’s expense with your viewing mates. I really do believe this movie will sell like gangbusters to women like Grimes and that general ilk; quiet girls with something of an edge—but mostly just odd—that are disarmed when another girl exposes her flaw of taking her plainly off-base self image too seriously.
It also struggles to visually execute some of it’s gags & gimmicks. As I said earlier; I saw their intent. When arms go numb it looks kind of dumb because they don’t look very numb. This is just a tight spot to get put in with live action but they chose to put themselves there. If this were anime you could literally draw their arms floppy and without bones and it’d sell but in live action you have to put in a ton of work and really really really know what you’re doing or else you get a lukewarm result that’s best suited to getting the wrong kind of laughs.
I really don’t want to mention anything else. I think I’ve already hurt it enough. It’s a nice movie at heart but it is a little bit silly—fundamentally. You start to get this odd nagging feeling that there’s just a bunch of dudes going aggro on a bunch of women and nobody’s phased by this stark binary until the end where the ultra deep voiced man in possession of a frightening degree of eloquence and stoicism reveals that yes, this is all intentional and part of the movie’s messaging. Men are of their own and women are of theirs; he tells it so beautifully. It’s a cross gender dialogue touching enough to bring tears to any feminist’s eyes. It really makes me question rooting ourselves so deeply in these oddly oppositional identities…they still shoot each other and then the girls get into their sweatpants and hoodies for a self-care retreat. The comedy of this plot sequence is understated to such a degree that I don’t think it was intentional.
My realization of the feminist utopia rating for Gunpowder Milkshake: they tried out of 10.
So at the end of it all the fathers and sons who are merely pawns in the patriarchal game lay dead—slaughtered in the fields of gender warfare—and the true enemy remains in power—merely negotiated down from hunting these free-range women for the rest of their days. I did get minorly confused as to whether that was a lesbian awakening happening on screen or if that was just meant sisterly but that’s just my over-sexed patriarchal conditioning. Clearly it couldn’t have been meant like that because there was a library’s worth of feminist books flashed on the screen in this gory R-rated action flick. I’m sorry for being such a bad ally. It just seems odd for a van full of heterosexual women to drive themselves into the sunset—abandoning every man on the face of the Earth in the belly of the beast which has enslaved them (WHERE THEY BELONG). These ladies have already taken a lifetime’s worth of shit but I’m left having to hope there’s a sequel in the works because I can’t save myself; I need a hero. Who could ever kill The Firm but these woke warriors of feminist studies who are proud to call themselves women?
That’s the Point
Ah, yes, female empowerment. True. Like I said; I like Sam for Sam. She’s my kind of gal. I’ll probably rewatch this but actually rewatch it unlike that other Netflix movie in the same awkward good-but-also-bad position, Mute. Gunpowder Milkshake just has way more inherent beauty and there’s a bit of comedic genius hidden in there. And wow, Rotten Tomatoes agrees with me; 64%. Aren’t I a man of the people! Here’s another one for you; Alita: Battle Angel (it’s just as flawed but just as lovable and looking for a good home.)
There’s one last mention of my arousal that I need to make; dream teams don’t turn me on. I find them superfluous and noisy. I don’t care how mega-famous your girl squad is. It’s just a flex for the human neurons to drool over. Do you think JK Rowling got pissed off that they didn’t nab big bads for every role in the Harry Potter movies? …Well I mean they kind of did but there are a lot of unknowns in there still…Anyways the point is IDGAF. It’s all just risk management, marketing and name recognition in the game of popularity.
So mostly importantly who is Navot Papushado and how did he get to write and direct this movie? He didn’t do so bad for being a nobody. It’s clear that he had enthusiasm, a big budget and a plethora of dreamy ideas. If he gets another shot in the movie making game I would expect a marked improvement because he came out swinging. My own recommendation, as the commentating gnat, is that with critical evaluation and some pained retrospection his next movie could be a great deal less harebrained.
My hearts says: 8 out of 10. My body says: YES. My rating says: 7 out of 10.
YOU WILL LIKE THIS MOVIE IF YOU LIKE:
Irritable odd and awkward female protagonists
Chaotic scenes arranged like a hot mess
Violent humor in a “bright and cheerful world”
Nonsexualized female casts
Beautiful bouquets of expendable bad guy trash (with character)
Storybook feelings and suspension of disbelief
Men telling the tale of female empowerment (better than historically)
Fantasizing about writing your own genre bending version of Kill Bill
Emotional heart-to-hearts as exposition and room to breathe
Impressionable young children co-staring in R-rated movies
Two meal’s worth of half-baked ideas all thrown together into a smoothie we’ll call a milkshake for reasons of being self-referential
Drunkenly despairing not being a real artist like Wes Anderson or even his girl/boy-friend
Working towards the realization of a feminist state
Music videos starring unusually confident quirky girls
Trailers to the Back
Jesus Christ am I glad I never watched this trailer before going into the movie. Not only was the music clearly not curated with approval of the director or consideration of it’s artistic content but this completely and entirely follows a different and wholesale worse creative vision. The movie really isn’t that aggro, at all, on any level. Nobody will have any clue about this movie’s personality if they watch that trailer. It’s an Instagram filter. Everyone knows you’re insecure. Why can’t you just accept who you are?
My being your true self to others rating for Gunpowder Milkshake: 2 out of 10.
I haven’t decided if I should join the darkside and review movies I know I’ll hate but the perfect candidate that’s got itself all lined up is KATE—the soon to be released female empowerment action flick from a producer of Atomic Blonde. Wow! That’s totally piqued my interest considering how blonde Charlize Theron was. I still can’t get over it. She just had so much energy and power that it was practically nuclear. Plus it was in the soviet union during the cold war and she was a spy—get it? Being powerful is so cool and interesting.
I really don’t like cool kid movies; they get off on themselves. Just listen to the one-liners in this trailer and you’ll know what I mean. KATE does all the trope tricks Gunpowder Milkshake does (lone wolf killer, kid sidekick, powerful organization, big name supporting actor) but I know it’s advertising is more accurate and I know it’s a worse movie. I might end up eating my words but…that dialogue is so obnoxiously cliche that I want it to fail because it doesn’t have anything going for it. It’s just kill people porn. I kind of want to cringe.
Trailers can be so terrible but I can love them so much. The trailers for Battle Angel: Alita realized what the movie failed to be, Man of Steel’s condensed it’s best elements, Metal Gear Solid V’s hid how much of a hot mess it was and Joker’s were all you needed to see). Thinking about it this might be some sort of genetic illness imparted by it’s Netflix parentage. Corporate inbreeding is a real danger. Have you ever seen a good Netflix trailer? Forget the movies; that’s a lot to pull off. Can they even manage two minutes of cinematic intercourse? Does Netflix fuck? They do occasionally:
Stranger Things // El Camino // Bright
But not really with these kinds of movies. For some reason they lose passion. Action schlock just isn’t a very high priority. There’s no brains in blowing up baddies and there’s no love either. I don’t know what there is. Seems fed off a great big sense of cultural self importance. Some big old fantasy we’ve been playing since we were kids. Getting away from the humdrum and sticking out a thumb; looking to kick ass and chew bubblegum.
If you have any thoughts comments or ideas on how I can up my movie critic attitude and truly surpass the bondage of my mere mortal form please
I plan on escaping Earth’s atmosphere in the next year—well before everyone catches on about me and how much I’ve creatively failed.