'Gunpowder Milkshake': You Can Have A 'John Wick'-Style Milkshake As A Treat, But It's Not Much Of A Coherent Movie [Review]

Navot Papushado’s new movie, “Gunpowder Milkshake,” makes two promises and keeps them both: Spent chemical explosives and sweet dairy drinks. One comes in higher quantities than the other, much, much higher, but Papushado takes an approach to action that’s equally as sugary as the title’s latter half. No false advertising, just lots of bullets and arterial spray. You can have a milkshake, as a treat.

“Gunpowder Milkshake” follows Sam, played as a teen by Freya Allan and as a woman by Karen Gillan. Because the movie functions a little bit like a fairy tale, Sam was once upon a time abandoned at a diner by her mom, Scarlet (Lena Headey), and left in the care of Nathan (Paul Giamatti), Scarlet’s boss or handler, or partner; Papushado and his writing partner, Ehud Lavski, draw their relationship vaguely at best. Years later, Sam has grown up and opted into the family business, nursing a wound left by Scarlet’s unceremonious departure in her youth. If Papushado left the story at that, he wouldn’t be Papushado, of course, so for clarity: The family business is “murdering people”; Sam is a socially maladjusted contract killer with terrible impulse control; Scarlet is a legend in her field; Nathan is, well, Nathan.

Because Sam’s interpersonal skills and self-restraint are breathtakingly inadequate, she commits two cardinal sins early in “Gunpowder Milkshake,” or really the same cardinal sin twice: She kills Men She Isn’t Supposed To Kill. The first is the son of a gangster, Jim McAlester (Ralph Ineson). The second is David (Samuel Anderson), a regular man at the top of Nathan’s ~~priority~~ murderin’ list for stealing a small fortune from the Firm, a shadow organization comprising men who, according to Sam’s opening monologue, “have been running things a long, long time.” Sam cleans up their messes whenever they make them. Sometimes she makes her own.

After killing David, she decides to take the money to masked men holding his daughter, Emily (Chloe Coleman), for ransom, and from there, her circumstances go from “bad” to “worse” to “the very worst.” Just pissing off her employers or a crime lord wouldn’t be enough. Instead, Sam has to piss off both. “Gunpowder Milkshake” is the latest in a long line of action films about double-crossed hitmen on the run from their retainers, from “Le Samourai” to “Branded to Kill” to “In Bruges”; it’s also the latest attempt at a “John Wick” riff, and a riff of poliziotteschi movies, and a whole bunch of other things at the same time. It isn’t the best take on these sub-genres, franchises, and themes, but it’s definitely the most.

“Gunpowder Milkshake” lays out an ambitious agenda for itself, so Papushado at least deserves that much credit: His movie is about screwed up mother-daughter dynamics, the real meaning of “family,” arrested development, and the thrill of watching bad guys get their heads blown off. What it isn’t about is continuity, or editing, because there’s so, so much happening in the movie’s 1 hour and 49-minute running time, and very little of it winds together in satisfactory or even cogent ways. Like “John Wick,” “Gunpowder Milkshake” is set amid a lurid underworld where various mob factions compete with one another for resources, and where safehouses and neutral ground are common: The diner at the beginning of the movie, for instance, is a gun-free zone, just like the hospital Sam takes David to after she accidentally wounds him. There are rules, too, though “don’t kill the unforgiving Irishman’s son” is universal in any hitman movie. Conduct matters.

Papushado leaves this world mostly unexplored, perhaps assuming that his audience is familiar with the “Wick” movies and will, therefore, “get” what he’s going for. This isn’t an unfair premise, but it isn’t a particularly good way to make movies either. Origin stories wait around seemingly every corner: Scarlet’s, Nathan’s, the Firm’s, the hospital’s, Rose (Joanna Bobin), the diner waitress responsible for making sure firearms stay out of the joint. Most of all, there’s a story for Anna May (Angela Bassett), Mathilde (Carla Gugino), and Florence (Michelle Yeoh), the three women who run the Library, where Sam gets her guns, knives, and ammo from. (Come to that, there’s an origin story for the Library, too.) Anna May, Mathilde, and Florence belong to a “sisterhood” of assassins. Once they’re introduced, it’s a matter of time before they join in the mayhem.

“Gunpowder Milkshake” doesn’t over-explain itself, which is a kindness; none of these origins stories need to be told, though Papushao’s tongue-in-cheek tone and bright neon aesthetic leave lingering temptation to see them told anyway. (Note to producers: Please do not fund these movies.) But the movie doesn’t really explain itself, either, and there’s something to be said for knowing what to keep and what to cut out when you’re making movies that swing this big. Does “Gunpowder Milkshake” need two antagonist squads, three if we’re counting the thugs holding Emily hostage? Why, when one will suffice? The film answers with “why not?” The honesty is refreshing, even if the end product is frustrating.

The action avails the movie nicely, mechanical, balletic, and ferocious, with Papushado sneaking in black humor where appropriate. This assumes you can find a laugh in dudes getting their heads crushed with giant prop teeth, though if you can’t laugh at that, then you should probably stay away from “Looney Tunes.” The cartoonishness is a plus. It’s a thrill to see Yeoh exercising her skills as a martial artist, too, though the more she’s on screen, the more it aches that her role is so limited. It’s Gillan and Headey who do most of the work here. Headey’s in her element. Gillan is capable. But Papushado’s excesses hold them back from performing at their best — just as they take him down a few rungs after his stunning sophomore film “Big Bad Wolves.” It’s a relief to see him making another feature so many years after that movie’s release, but what a bummer that this is all he could do. [C]