La Ron S. Readus
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The TRUTH About The Firm! (VIDEO SCRIPT)
🕑 Added 2021-08-04 20:01:01 +0000 UTCI’m gonna be honest with you, Readers. When you get Gunpowder Milkshake started, the first 30 or so minutes aren’t anything special.
Which says a lot, because the main factors that attracted me to the movie was seeing Karen Gillan in a lead role, and how the film was gonna handle the subgenre of badass female assassins that was made popular by Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill.
/Throw in Angela Basset and Michelle Yeoh as supporting characters, and you can see how I was hooked on the main cast alone./
But its like I said, earlier; depending on where your attention span and patience is over the course of the first 30 minutes of the movie, you may have a hard time getting into the meat of the story.
But as someone who’s watched the movie, I promise that it’s worth it.
/Because not only does it provide a great way of comparing the lives and decision-making process of both main character Sam and her mother Scarlet, but it also helps put into perspective how one can interpret the very organization that placed the mother and daughter into the very scenario of the film, the Firm./
But before I break that down, I just want to give a quick shout out to the sponsor of this video, Atlas VPN
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Now before I continue, I just want to let everyone know that this video will contain spoilers for Netflix’s Gunpowder Milkshake from here on out. So if you don’t want to be spoiled, I suggest you go watch the film first before you continue on with this video. Cool? Cool.
So while some may say that the beginning of Gunpowder Milkshake is a bit of a slog, it actually helps set up a lot of what we later discover about how the Firm works.
Thanks to it, we know that there’s a guild of assassins that Sam’s mom Scarlet used to work for.
/And after a job went wrong, she had to abandon ship and leave Sam in the hands of the Firm’s HR representative Nathan, played by Paul Giamatti./
Thing is, she’s been gone for so long that Sam grew up and decided to work for the Firm as well, knowing nothing but killing from growing up in the business with her mom.
And because of this, she has access to a lot of perks. Such as an exclusive hospital that treats assassins.
But by the time we meet a grown-up Sam making her way as one of the Firm’s best assassins, she has some hiccups with a couple of jobs...
/The first involving knocking off the only son of a very high-profile mob boss in a low-profile job, and the second involving losing a shit-ton of the guild’s money in an attempt at retrieving the kidnapped daughter of an employee that was going to be used as ransom./
The thing about both of these jobs however, is that how she handles both of them attracted the negative attention of the Firm’s higher-ups. And to make things worse, they compounded on each other with very little to no empathy regarding understanding Sam’s situation or her decision-making process.
/This was made especially clear in the first job that resulted in the only son of Jim McAlister being killed by her hand./ (bad intel...just follow orders)
But, for the audience, the one that gets word of how the Firm operates when it comes to their assassins is Sam’s gig in getting back their stolen money, which gets the wheels rolling on the movie’s very story.
As far as they know, and as far as they CARE to know, is that an accountant from the clean end of the guild stole a ridiculous amount of money from them and wants Sam to get it back.
What they DON’T know is that he stole that money because his daughter was kidnapped and was going to use it as a ransom payment before Sam found him.
/It was only after accidentally shooting him and hearing the kidnappers demands that she tried to make amends in order to try and save his life, and use the money to rescue his 8 year old daughter Emily./ (Eight and 3 quarters)
However, it’s like I said earlier; the Firm doesn’t give a damn about the why. Like Nathan said back in the diner, they only care about what THEY want. And what they want is the return of their stolen money.
/And the moment that Sam made a moral decision to retrieve Emily instead of returning the money -- which she had EVERY intention to retrieve after making sure was safe if the kidnappers didn’t destroy it in an attempt to double-cross each other, by the way -- Nathan, the same one that acted as her caregiver and promised to protect her after her mother left, was immediately ready and willing to send 3 hitmen to collect her and the money if he was unsuccessful in talking her back into returning it./
And it was in that decision and the loss of the money, combined that she chose to eliminate McAlister’s son in the previous job -- who we find out is a client of the Firm -- in order to save her life from their own bad intel...
/That causes them to immediately drop her from their resources and protection./
/Just like they did when Sam’s mother Scarlet murdered the Russian mob boss that killed her father, and was forced to leave her behind in Nathan’s care 15 years prior./
So when the two reunite and we find out that’s why Scarlet left, we empathize with Sam all the more. Because while its easy to believe that’s what actually happened to Scarlet because of the flashback we saw at the beginning of the movie, we saw all of that happen with Sam.
/We saw how the Firm began to change their tone in regards to how they view Sam’s commitment the moment she pushed their happiness to the side in order to prioritize her survival. We saw how quickly the Firm was comfortable with writing her out of the equation and offering her life to the “dissatisfied” client they clearly valued more than her once they were able to convince themselves that she was no longer of any use to them./
And that’s why the first 30 minutes of the movie is so important. Because without it, it wouldn’t be immediately clear to see that the real-life allegory for Gunpowder Milkshake’s Firm is the modern day patriarchy.
Now for those of you who are unaware, a patriarchy is a social system in which men have most of the power. And patriarchal societies can exist ANYWHERE. Even in places like the US, the UK and Japan that either appear or aim to be more inclusive, there’s still a lot of structure and personal thinking that plays into the patriarchy.
/As Sam explained the Firm to Emily near the end of the movie, they’re exactly that. However, in the case of how patriarchal societies thrive, they reflect how it’s allowed in more progressive nations; a group or organization participating in a broader -- possibly more progressive and inclusive -- world./
But as we know in real life -- and as we’ve seen in Gunpowder Milkshake -- patriarchy, or its allegory the Firm, isn’t intended to be either progressive or inclusive.
/Not even Nathan, Sam’s boss and caregiver, who from beginning to end operated under “Fuck Them Kids” mode when he chose not to emphasize with her decision to save Emily. He didn’t even change his tone when he met her for the first time. Instead he said/(so this is the little girl all the fuss was about, huh?)
Nathan, despite his initial role, is a perfect representation of how men are affected in the patriarchy. Especially when it comes to the people who don’t benefit from it.
Yes, Sam was entrusted to Nathan by Scarlet and made “attempts” to keep her safe. Yes, Nathan gave Sam the location of Scarlet as a way of giving her a head start when the Firm threw her out to the wolves.
/But at the end of the day, his loyalty is to the Firm to the point where whatever codes and ethics he might have had in the past were replaced with that of the people who were responsible for his lifestyle. And we actually see that in play when we’re introduced to the modern version of him, when he tries to sneak a pistol into the film’s neutral zone, The Diner./
Then there’s Jim McAlister, the mob boss whose son was killed by Sam.
/It’s already clear that his entire view of feminism is absolutely fucked during his monologue about why his son was so important to him. I don’t care HOW many girls you helped produce; if you feel like a stranger in your own goddamn home, you may be part of the problem./
But considering how easy it was for him to pull a Karen and complain to the Firm about the assassin that killed his son, only for the Firm to offer Sam’s last known address as a way of keeping relations good...
/Kinda mirrors how undeserving individuals -- mostly men -- are awarded certain perks and privileges if the society in question deems you more of an investment as opposed to one trying to live within and follow its rules./
Speaking of which, there are plenty of Sams and Scarlets out there right now as I speak. Who, in the context of the movie, are two of the best assassins the Firm has ever had.
We all assume thanks to seeing it play out in both flashbacks and over the course of the story that Scarlet was one of their best assassins before deciding to enact her revenge on the mob boss that killed her husband and Sam’s father.
/Then, she becomes nobody because she -- like her daughter would do 15 years in the future -- jeopardized the Firm’s initial interests and threw her to the wolves./
Sam becomes an assassin soon after, because it's a skill she developed going on jobs with her mom and she’s just as good at it. And because of Nathan being her caretaker, she works for the Firm.
For a while, things are hunky-dory. She becomes one of their best assassins since her mom left, and keeps the higher ups happy.
/That is, until she has to make a judgement call in order to save her life thanks to bad intel on THEIR part, and deciding to make the morally positive decision to jeopardize the stolen money in order to save Emily./
When it comes to the Firm, both Sam and Scarlet -- just like countless other women tied up in patriarchal societies -- had to play by their rules in order to get to where they were before they were discarded, thinking that by their actions, their talents and their capabilities, that would be more than enough to gain their respect and have their backs.
/But no matter what it was they gave, it wasn’t enough. And it would NEVER be enough. Because the Firm wasn’t created with them in mind, nor will it ever be ADJUSTED to include them in it./
The Firm in Gunpowder Milkshake represents the patriarchy, and the actions of Sam and Scarlet represent how they view and value women.
Just like the patriarchy, the Firm allows you to operate within its sanctum as long as you follow its rules. Operate within their parameters. Don’t piss off the wrong people.
/Because the moment that you do anything that affects the Firm negatively -- even if what you did was an act of seeking justice like Scarlet, or a mix of survival and morality like Sam -- it’ll drop you and seek out your destruction./
It doesn’t matter how long you’ve operated under their rules. It doesn’t matter how loyal you’ve been to them since conforming to their ways. It doesn’t matter how much of their rhetoric you spew or convince yourself to believe.
/The moment that you step out of line or show that you’re being a hindrance to them, they are no longer willing to keep you under their umbrella and will push you out to the storm./
So while the tackles feminism as it should and shouldn’t be utilized, the film ALSO presents what’s currently standing in the way of feminism achieving its goal of equality in its truest form in showing what women have to do, deal with, and sacrifice, in order to survive in a world where women are merely tolerated instead of being seen as equal.
/And the only way to free yourself from the patriarchal norms that are reflected by the actions of the Firm, is to show it that you’re not to be trifled with, and threaten to ruin the lives of everyone benefitting from it by burning it to the ground./
But, I digress, Readers. Your homework assignment for the day:
Write in the comment section below what you thought of Gunpowder Milkshake if you’ve seen it.
Or, if you feel like sharing with the rest of the class, a film you’ve seen that you feel did a pretty good job at using an analogy in order to depict a real-life struggle against true feminism.
Whichever question you decide to answer, I’d love to know your thoughts.
