Garlic and Gunpowder 2018 ***

The kind of B movie which seem to be turning up on Amazon with some frequency, Garlic and Gunpowder is a minor noir that owes some debt to Quentin Tarantino; casting figures like Michael Madsen and Vivian A Fox from Kill Bill makes that influence explicit, and Martin Kove from Cagney and Lacey also takes a ribbing here with regards to his tv pedigree. But all of the name actors take second place to a hit-man story set in ‘Big City’ where Steven Chase and James Duvall tangle with bob boss Ma (Felissa Rose). There’s a clown as well, and a well-worked gag about using gunpowder to create an explosion when a case is opened. Co-writer and director Harrison Smith doesn’t quite manage to pull the elements together in a breakout fashion, but Garlic and Gunpowder is better than it’s non-existent reputation deserves; at the time of writing, it’s scored no IMDB critics reviews at all.