Gunpowder Milkshake was a film that had everything going for it. An all-star cast including Karen Gillan, Lena Headey, Carla Gugino, Michelle Yeoh, and Angela Bassett, promising fight and action scenes, and potentially an interesting storyline. But even with all that, I found that the film fell flat; the acting felt forced, the fight scenes were overly gory and strange, and the storyline was subpar at best.
Gunpowder Milkshake follows the life of Sam, who is played by Karen Gillan on her journey through life, to take back her life from those who have wronged her. The film also features the all-star cast (as mentioned above), Lena Headey playing Scarlet, Carla Gugino playing Madeleine, Michelle Yeoh playing Florence, and Angela Bassett playing Anna May. The film is directed by Navot Papushado and written by Navot Papushado and Ehud Lavski.
Throughout the film, I kept silently hoping it would improve, that an explanation for everything would come, that something cool would take place, but it never did. To be honest, the film wasn’t the worst though and could have been extremely good if it were taken a bit of a different direction.
Even though I didn’t love the film, I thought that the fact that the film was created and exists is quite inspiring. The film has the air of films like Pulp Fiction and John Wick, but in this rather than being led by men, they were led by women. Thus this movie has joined the short list of true female-led action movies, which I feel is a solid step for the film industry and Netflix. All of these things made me really want to enjoy the film, but I just couldn’t get over the flaws.
Overall, I felt like Gunpower Milkshake was just okay. But, it didn't have a lot to it and was very simple but somehow complicated. It was kinda gory, a bit strange, and just not as good as I thought it would be. I felt like the film leaned on its all-star cast a little bit too much to attempt to bail out the rough film. But, the great cast is also what made this film so empowering.