Shimmering Neon Lights: ‘Gunpowder Milkshake,’ ‘Jolt,’ And The Daughters of ‘John Wick’

It’s pretty likely that even without the streaming content rush, the John Wick series would have spawned a number of imitators. The three Wick films’ upward trajectory from minor genre hit to summer-movie event has increased demand enough to result in credible imitators like Atomic Blonde (John Wick as a lady spy in 1989) and Nobody (John Wick as a put-upon suburban dad). But streaming services have turned neon-accented, lone-badass-in-a-stylized world action pictures into something resembling a glut, especially when it comes to female-fronted variations. In July alone, Netflix has put out the Karen Gillan shoot-em-up Gunpowder Milkshake while Amazon debuted the Kate Beckinsale punch-em-up Jolt. This fall will bring Mary Elizabeth Winstead in Netflix’s Kate; even a barely-released curiosity like Ava, a poorly reviewed Jessica Chastain vehicle from last year that’s like Wick redone as a family soap, has climbed the Netflix charts this year. Surely Milla Jovovich will get one of these going soon.

Jovovich’s fellow Screen Gems heroine Kate Beckinsale seems like a natural fit for this world too, given her long-term moonlighting in the Underworld series. Like Wick‘s Keanu Reeves, she has both the acting chops and the physical skills to bring a sense of humanity to her action heroics. Jolt doesn’t take full advantage of its stars’ gifts in either area. It dabbles in both, more successfully when it explores the rage that fuels Lindy (Beckinsale), a woman with an impulse-control glitch and accompanying training that makes her a potentially deadly weapon if someone pisses her off. She can only control herself through a self-administered electric shock, engineered by her therapist/electrician (Stanley Tucci). When an unusually promising romantic prospect breaks through her general misanthropy, Lindy opens herself up; when her not-quite-boyfriend meets a sticky end, she unleashes herself in revenge. 

Tanya Wexler’s movie is most intriguing when it’s nudging lone-badass dynamics out of the pulp-cartoon zone. Though it’s got plenty of neon lighting, an unnamed “city” setting that looks like fake New York (the better to address subway etiquette), and a heightened quippiness, Lindy’s triggers are often quotidian—man-spreading, rude people, and the idea that she should keep her anger locked away. It would be even more resonant if the movie was less arch or cutesy; the dialogue has the with and depth of an “I Hate People” t-shirt, which Beckinsale must delivery as if it contains outrageous bon mots. Despite some provocative ideas, Jolt‘s violence is ultimately more expressive than its text—and Wexler only delivers those thrills in bits and pieces. Gunpowder Milkshake has more Wickian set pieces: It’s impressively dedicated to generating as many shoot-outs and fights as possible. Like Ava, it tries to dimensionalize the loner-assassin archetype, with Gillan as a trained killer working out her mommy issues by protecting a little girl from harm. The aesthetics of this business are gorgeous, recalling the sheer beauty of Atomic Blonde, with the obligatory neon lighting and crisply arranged set design. 

If John Wick and Atomic Blonde feel like the parents to children like Gunpowder Milkshake and Jolt, the newer movies can also trace some lineage back to tongue-in-cheek mid-2000s action movies: Jolt is basically reverse Crank (where Jason Statham had to adrenalize himself, and in the sequel shock himself, back to life), while Milkshake bears some resemblance to Shoot ‘Em Up (which, like Gunpowder, also pitted its hero against a sputtering Paul Giamatti). It’s striking to see these dude-focused paeans to going over the top reconceived as women’s stories, rejecting cartoony nihilism and revealing the fashion-plate tendencies of heavily stylized action heroes in the process. 

It’s also fascinating to see how these newer versions approach the inevitable juvenilia: the built-in base thrills that the movies must set up in order to wink at. Gunpowder Milkshake, for example, sometimes feels girlier than something like Atomic Blonde—not in the misguided-pejorative sense that it’s “too girly,” but in terms of how little Gillan’s character feels like an adult woman compared to Theron’s operator in Blonde. Even if that arrested quality is part of the movie’s thematic concern, it feels especially glaring when Gillan meets up with mentor characters played by Carla Gugino, Angela Bassett, and Michelle Yeoh—and not because they outclass the movie with their elder-stateswoman sophistication. Instead, they’re turned into cuddly empowerment mascots who spend a lot of time ripping off the John Wick tailor scenes. 

Gillan is too much fun in the more comic set pieces—attempting to fend off assassins with non-functioning hands, for example—to call the Gunpowder Milkshake‘s vision of righteous pulp violence infantilizing. The filmmakers obviously want the milkshake sweetness to chase away all that gunpowder; that’s part of the design scheme. But both Gunpowder and Jolt feel a little junior-level next to Atomic Blonde, which choreographs its base thrills with more gusto—and, even without much emotional depth, sustains its mixtape moods with less contrivance. Jolt and Gunpowder have their moments, but they each have elements that feel algorithm-generated. They’re object lessons in how difficult it is to stylize a cult movie into existence. 

Jesse Hassenger is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com and tweets dumb jokes at @rockmarooned.

Watch Jolt on Amazon Prime

Watch Gunpowder Milkshake on Netflix