Gunpowder Milkshake

Directed by Navot Papushado, Gunpowder Milkshake follows an elite assassin (Karen Gillan’s Sam) as she reluctantly takes a young girl under her wing after killing said girl’s father during a seemingly routine mission. It’s a familiar yet workable setup that’s employed to mostly underwhelming effect by Papushado, as the filmmaker, armed with his and Ehud Lavski’s screenplay, delivers a relentlessly broad thriller that moves at a blistering pace but contains little in the way of compelling, engaging elements – with the movie’s arms-length atmosphere compounded by a continuing emphasis on egregiously over-the-top action sequences and set-pieces. (Papushado, along with cinematographer Michael Seresin, has infused such moments with a distractingly colorful and thoroughly exaggerated sensibility that drains them of anything resembling energy and excitement, ultimately.) And while certain interludes possess a technical proficiency that’s admittedly quite impressive, Gunpowder Milkshake, saddled with a ludicrous 114 minute running time, builds towards an unsatisfying, uninvolving climactic stretch that ensures it concludes on about as underwhelming a note as one could envision – which is too bad given the potential afforded by Papushado’s often breathtakingly violent approach to the material. (It’s all just so slick, though.)

** out of ****