This visually jazzy, neon-hued action thriller has so many frames that look like they’ve been pulled straight from a comic book cover page.

Even though this is an original story, the comic book DNA runs through the veins of this film, right from the start with the cut and hatched figure of its hero evoking Dick Tracy.

With Karen Gillan, Lena Headey, Angela Bassett, Michelle Yeoh, Carla Gugino and Paul Giamatti, all about Milkshakes with powder is exacerbated. The colors are more saturated, from the aqua of the dinner uniforms to the vivid red of her copious splashes of blood.

Which makes the film’s generous violence more cartoonish than gory – although there are several very gruesome deaths that plague the dozens of anonymous contract killers whose wide-necked suits likely came from Tony Manero’s remains.

If you are looking for grounded realism, Milkshakes with powder is not it. It’s a confection – a sparkling dessert that’s fun in the moment but quickly forgotten.

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Sam (Gillan) is a professional assassin working for a secret organization called The Firm, a cabal of old, white men in costume. Her master is Nathan (Giamatti), who took her in as a teenager when her mother Scarlet (Headey) abandoned her to go into hiding.

When Sam is sent to collect the stolen money from The Firm, she finds herself in a conundrum, forced to choose between her job and saving a child (Chloe Coleman).

On the run and with an army of Irish gangsters on his heels, Sam turns to a group of former comrades of his mother, Anna May (Bassett), Florence (Yeoh) and Madeleine (Gugino), who are dressed in the same colors as The Sleeping Beauty. good fairies. The costume palette is surely no coincidence as they turn out to be somehow her fairy godmothers.

The three women run an old library in a rotunda, it really is a democratic secret society of assassins. They hide weapons in books by Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen.

It’s also not revealing the game – because it’s in the trailers – to say that Headey’s Scarlet is making a comeback in Sam’s life for the ultimate showdown between ass-punching warriors and men. of hand without gormless sent to kill them.

Milkshakes with powder is a little fun and harmless, plus a collection of passable action sets sprinkled with parenting aphorisms – and there’s a stunning photo of Headey plunging fiercely into the fray while wielding two massive pistols.

No one is killed here by falling rocks.

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Director and co-writer Navot Papushado is embarking on a crowded genre, and while Milkshakes with powderMichael Seresin’s vivid cinematography looks cool, it’s not tonal distinct, and it doesn’t have the crazy energy of the John wick saga or the verve of Atomic blonde.

Milkshakes with powder is a bit disjointed and the fight sequences could be tighter and smoother as they attempt to evoke works by Guy Ritchie, Ben Wheatley, Chad Stahelski, and David Leitch.

But there’s something exhilarating about watching Yeoh and Bassett being just badass, and Gillan is absolutely capable of grounding his own action franchise – for those things, it’s worth the price of admission.

Rating: 3/5

Gunpowder Milkshake is in theaters now (except Sydney and Victoria)

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