Three Hot Librarians and Other Topics

As I've said, we're watching more streaming - and Ms. Spenser let me choose this time. So we watched Gunpowder Milkshake (2021).

It stars Karen Gilllan (Dr. Who's Amy Pond) as a young assassin. It starts with her waiting in a diner for her mother, drinking a milkshake. Her mother, Lena Headey, late as always, comes in, pursued by gangsters. They don't get her or Gillan, but Headley has to go away for a while. She leaves Gillan with her handler/booker, Paul Giamatti, and the "aunts at the Library".

So now Gillan is a young woman, killing people on her own. This job gets a little out of hand, and it turns out she has killed the son of a big mobster. But before she figures this out, she gets the job of retrieving some money an accountant has stolen from the mob. In the struggle over the money, she shoots the guy, and he reveals that he needed it to ransom his kidanpped daughter. So Gillan pledges to get the kid back.

To do this, she'll need guns, so she goes to the Library. It turns out that the Library is a front for an armory, with the guns hidden in certain books. The aunts are librarians: Carla Gugino, the motherly one, Angela Bassett, the strict one, and Michelle Yeoh, the awesome one (she doesn't really fit any librarian archetype, but she's Michelle Yeoh, so who cares). 

As things get more and more out of hand, Gillan eventually needs to bring her estranged mother into the mix.

So this takes place in a John-Wick-like world, with assassins who have diners, librarians and hospitals that cater to them. Except in this world, it's largely women kicking ass. This results in some cute stuff, like the way Gillan, and later the little girl she assuredly rescues, are always drinking vanilla milkshakes - except they never actually seemed to drink them. Some on! Life's too short in this world to diet. 

It was mostly a little better than forgettable, while not being close to as good as, say, John Wick. I'm a little torn by touches like the library. The filmmakers (ex: Israeli director Navot Papushado) knew that most of the audience, male and female, would love libraries and librarians - at least I do. But it was a little too cute, maybe, like something Noah Wylie would be in. 

Ms. Spenser spent her time handling emails andother screen-oriented chores while the movie was on, but actually watched a lot of it in between. So I guess it wasn't that bad.