Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!
I think we could make the case that in the last decade or so, the action movie has essentially been perfected. There are great action movies from the past, of course, but films like John Wick, Dredd, The Raid, Mad Max: Fury Road and more are precisely what is wanted from an action movie. Fury Road was the realization of that for me; I went in wanting two hours of car chases and explosions and, counting credits, that’s what I got. There are others that walk in those same circles, even if they aren’t quite there. Wanted and Taken, for instance, play in that same hyper-action field. The Kingsmen series fits in there, as does the underseen The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Atomic Blonde is essentially a James Bond film with a woman in the lead role. And into this crowded room of gunslingers and assassins walks Gunpowder Milkshake.
Based on what I have called this review, it won’t be a huge surprise to anyone that this is very much a woman-driven version of John Wick, although there are big nods to Wanted as well. Like both of those films, we are deep in a world of a secret cabal of assassins. In this case, it is a shadowy organization called The Firm. Scarlet (Lena Headey) is one of their top assassins, but she gets into some trouble and is forced to make a quick disappearance, leaving her daughter Sam (eventually played by Karen Gillan) in the care of Nathan (Paul Giamatti).
