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Netflix just dropped the trailer for the deadliest family reunion in the action-thriller genre.
Netflix released the official trailer for Gunpowder Milkshake in mid-June 2021, giving audiences their first real look at director Navot Papushado’s neon-soaked revenge picture ahead of its July 14 release. The footage centers on Karen Gillan’s Sam, an elite hitwoman raised inside The Firm after her mother abandoned her at age 12, and the all-star sisterhood she’s forced to call on when a job goes sideways. Between the gun battles, the getaway-car chaos, and a supporting cast stacked with genre royalty, the trailer makes a strong case for one of the summer’s most stylized releases.
- Karen Gillan’s Sam goes rogue to protect eight-year-old Emily (Chloe Coleman) after a botched Firm assignment, putting her at odds with rival henchman leader Jim McAlister (Ralph Ineson).
- Sam must reunite with her estranged mother Scarlet (Lena Headey) and a trio of veteran assassins posing as librarians — Anna May (Angela Bassett), Florence (Michelle Yeoh), and Madeleine (Carla Gugino) — who hide weapons inside hollowed-out books.
- The film, co-written by Papushado and Ehud Lavski and produced by The Picture Company and StudioCanal, was picked up by Netflix for U.S. distribution and hits the service on July 14, 2021.
The Setup: A Botched Job and an Abandoned Kid
The trailer opens on the backstory that drives the whole plot: Scarlet, a master assassin working for the crime syndicate known only as The Firm, abandons 12-year-old Sam after a hit goes wrong. Fifteen years later, Sam has grown into one of The Firm’s most efficient operatives, cleaning up the organization’s messes with the same cold precision her mother once had. That precision cracks when a routine assignment forces her to choose between following orders and shielding Emily, an innocent eight-year-old who becomes collateral in a job gone bad.
That choice is what puts Sam on the run, with The Firm and McAlister’s crew of henchmen both hunting her down. It’s a familiar setup for the genre — see the calculated brutality of The Old Guard or the assassin mythology of Ava — but Papushado leans hard into comic-book visual language, with saturated color grading and stylized violence that separates Gunpowder Milkshake from a straight revenge thriller.
The Librarians Steal the Show
The trailer’s biggest selling point isn’t Gillan or Headey alone — it’s the trio backing them up. Angela Bassett, Michelle Yeoh, and Carla Gugino play Anna May, Florence, and Madeleine, three veteran operatives who’ve spent years hiding in plain sight as librarians while stashing firearms inside hollowed-out classic novels. Watching three actresses with decades of combined screen presence pull guns out of books is exactly the kind of gimmick that sells a trailer, and Netflix’s marketing clearly knows it.
Three generations of women, one crime syndicate, and an army of henchmen standing between them and getting out alive.
The footage teases one particularly wild set piece: Sam, temporarily paralyzed after a fight, has weapons taped to her incapacitated hands so she can keep firing while Emily takes the wheel of their getaway car. It’s the kind of darkly comic beat that recalls the tone Netflix has chased before in genre trailers like The Old Guard Trailer #2, mixing brutal choreography with a wink at the audience.
The Supporting Cast Rounds It Out
Paul Giamatti appears as Nathan, described as The Firm’s human resources contact — a title that promises the kind of bureaucratic dark comedy layered underneath the bloodshed. Freya Allan, known to genre audiences from other recent streaming projects, plays a young version of Sam in flashback sequences that fill in the gap between Scarlet’s disappearance and the woman Sam becomes. Ralph Ineson’s McAlister rounds out the antagonist side, giving the henchmen army a face beyond the faceless goons typically populating this kind of shootout-heavy trailer.
Lena Headey’s presence carries its own weight given her history playing calculating, dangerous women on screen, a throughline visible in her other 2021 project, Masters of the Universe: Revelation. Here, Scarlet isn’t a queen on a throne — she’s a mother trying to make up for walking away, and the trailer leans on that tension as much as the gunfights.
Netflix July Release Schedule Placement
Gunpowder Milkshake lands on Netflix on July 14, 2021, after StudioCanal and The Picture Company shepherded the production and Netflix locked up U.S. distribution rights. That release date puts it squarely in the middle of the streamer’s summer action push, competing for eyeballs against the platform’s own deep catalog of stylized shooter-thrillers. For a film built around a four-woman ensemble carrying assault rifles out of library shelves, the trailer did exactly what it needed to do — it made the pitch loud, colorful, and impossible to ignore.
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