Vibrant yet slow feminist kitsch. You will love "Powder cocktail" if you do not fall asleep on it

On July 15, the action movie "Powder Cocktail" by Israeli director and screenwriter Navot Papushado will be released in Russia. Previously, he and his colleague Aharon Keshales directed the chamber crime thriller Very Bad Boys, which won accolades from Quentin Tarantino Calls Israeli Thriller ‘Big Bad Wolves’ the Best Film of the Year by Quentin Tarantino himself.

From the very beginning, "Powder Cocktail" was positioned as a bright and kitschy thriller about the "not weak sex". But in the end, the authors played too much with the theme of emancipation and completely forgot about the pace of the story, which would not hurt to be a little livelier.

Emancipated and cool heroines

In the center of the plot is the killer Sam, whom Nathan, the head of a crime syndicate called the Firm, took under his wing as a child. Performing the next task, the heroine is faced with a choice: follow the direct instructions of the boss or save the eight-year-old girl Emily, who was left an orphan through her fault.

The rebellious mercenary is immediately hunted down. But Sam comes to the aid of his mother, whom she has not seen for many years, and her former partners are the same killers who use the library as a cover.

Strong women who can outplay a man in his own field are frequent guests on the screens. For example, as early as the 1970s, the exploitative subgenre rape-revenge (literally "revenge for rape") was popular, coinciding with the sexual revolution and the second wave of feminism. Now the women's movement is experiencing another upsurge, and cinema is responding to changes in society, offering viewers more and more interesting heroines.

Not all experiments over the past decade have been successful: for example, the reboot of the Ghostbusters franchise, where the original cast was replaced by a female one, objectively failed, and a flurry of criticism fell on the film. However, "Powder Cocktail" is more reminiscent not of "Hunters" and not even "8 Ocean Friends", but driving epics of Zack Snyder ("Army of the Dead") and Robert Rodriguez ("From Dusk Till Dawn"). However, it was already clear from the trailer that the film was conceived as a fusion of mainstream, arthouse and operational cinema.

With the latter, "Powder cocktail" is just related by the fact that it is permeated with the theme of female emancipation. But at the same time it is presented quite subtly - through situational humor and references. Here is just one example: in the story, mercenaries hide weapons right in library books. And at some point, the heroine, who urgently needs him, literally comes to the aid of the great women of the past: Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf.

But at the same time too annoying social message

Unfortunately, the creators still went too far, exploiting the theme of feminism, and showed the movement as a struggle of women against men. Moreover, an unequal struggle, because the opponents of the heroines are all depicted as worthless, pitiful cowards and weaklings. The only apparently positive male character is on the screen for only a few minutes. "It seems to be" - because, as it turns out later, he was not an ideal father either.

Oddly enough, the heroines turned out to be not entirely flat - perhaps this is the merit of really cool actresses. But from slogans like "Stop pushing us around!" I want to roll my eyes. It really does evoke a sense of Spanish shame. After all, calls of this level are no longer used even in advertising for women's sportswear.

And if the opponents were even a little more dangerous, this would greatly increase the stakes and make the confrontation more interesting. In fact, the whole struggle of women for independence is devalued, because the problem is not in the strength of enemies, but in their number.

Stunning visuals and play with meaning

At the same time, cinema plays amazingly subtly with the cultural code. So, the audience will see an ingenious shootout scene in the video distribution. The latter, by the way, is lined with discounts, which is especially ironic in light of how the industry has been wiped out by streaming services.

So, there the heroine will have to fight with four masked enemies. And those viewers who are well acquainted with the history of cinema will immediately recognize in them the classic monsters of Universal - Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy and the Wolf Man. And it is doubly funny that they appear exactly in a location related to cinema.

The authors have hidden a lot of such jokes. A cache of ammo is found in the book How to Win Friends and Influence People. The killers disguised as librarians prefer exactly the same colors in their clothes as the three good fairies from Disney's The Sleeping Beauty. And one of them shoots enemies from the roof of the legendary Volkswagen minibus, which in general has always been a symbol of the hippie movement - ardent pacifists.

But too slow pace and failed generational drama

But I still don't want to re-watch the film, despite the Easter eggs dear to the heart of the moviegoer. This stems from problems with rhythm and tempo. Even the action in the picture is too slow. The constant change of locations does not help, although they are really extraordinary here: a dental clinic, bowling in the spirit of the 50s, a book depository and more.

The exposition is so prolonged that already in the first third of the picture you start to get bored. Closer to the denouement, the film accelerates and, just before the finale, produces an absolutely gorgeous battle scene, filmed in one shot in slow-mo. But the rest of the time "Powder cocktail" I want to watch it 1, 5 times faster, and this is its main problem.

Another significant disadvantage is that the second important leitmotif of the picture - the relationship of three generations - is not sufficiently disclosed. And all the rudiments for this are there. Mother Sam and her former comrades-in-arms embody the older generation: once they had to literally win their place in the male world.

The main character herself is a typical representative of millennials. She is still in search of herself and does not want to become a mother too early, like many of her peers these days. Finally, Emily is the youngest character in the film. It is her Sam and her partners who protect from the cruel details of their showdown, so that the circle of violence on her is interrupted. But at the level of an interesting idea, it all ends.

Gunpowder cocktail just fell short of the perfect summer blockbuster. On the one hand, we have before us an intelligent postmodern picture in the spirit of Tarantino. But it is spoiled by obvious shortcomings: the primitive characters of the enemies, the annoying exploitation of the theme of feminism and a very unhurried pace.