Gunpowder Milkshake
        
Director: Navot Papushado
Year: 2021
Rating: 7.0
If this film had been made before Taken, before Pulp Fiction, before John Wick, I think it would have received much more credit and acclaim. I mean what is better than one female hitwoman? Five of them of course. But while watching, I kept getting echoes from those other films plus all the many films that imitated them. Not just plot points but stylistically as well. Director Navot Papushado had to know this but must have gone so what, I want to make a cool and stylish movie drenched in neon with beautiful female killers and buckets of violence and blood. And he does. If you can just forget those other films and the nagging in your ear that you have seen it before, this is good frantic fun. It took me about 30-minutes to get there and then the enjoyment of a few of the action set-pieces took control of my pleasure zone. And a tip of my non-existing hat to whoever chose the music to be played over the action scenes - Take Another Piece of My Heart and It's All Over Baby Blue were perfect. And it doesn't hurt that all five of the female actresses are stars. Angela Bassett, Lena Headey, Carla Gugino and Karen Gillan (Nebula in Guardians of the Galaxy) were enough for most films but then they think, we need one more and get Michelle Yeoh.



Sam (Karen) is a young killer phenom. She got it from her mother Scarlet (Lena) who was also a killer for the Firm. The Firm is a business that murders for money. A profitable business by the look of it. Sam is one of the best and she reports to Nathan (Paul Giamatti) who took Sam in as a teenager when her mother thought it best that she disappear fifteen years previously. Like mother, like daughter. Taking a page out of John Wick it is an imaginary world where hitman are all over and no police ever make an appearance. Or really even extras. There is even a neutral zone - a diner where everyone has to hand in their guns to the waitress at the door. "Lighten your load".  You can order a vanilla milkshake and feel safe. But mom broke the rules all those years ago by killing a Russian mobster as he sat at a table.



Things quickly go wrong for Sam. On a hit that the Firm has given her she unknowingly kills the son of a rival Assassin Company. They want retribution. Then on another hit, she finds out that the young daughter of her target has been kidnapped and will be killed in an hour if the father doesn't deliver money that he stole from the Firm. Hard for him since she shot him in the stomach. Now she feels like she has to rescue the girl and the night of killing begins. When Sam has no weapons, she goes to the local library to check out a few books. It is run by Angela, Carla and Michelle. Three very good bookish looking librarians. Certain books have weapons in them. "You'll need a Jane Austin, a Charlotte Bronte and a Virginia Woolf. And an Agatha Christie for reading." And then it goes over the top as an army of killers show up. The Mariachi music begins to swell and you know the fun is about to begin as the Librarians put away their library cards and pick up guns, chains, a machine gun and smoke bombs. There was a planned sequel but it bombed at the box office and that may never happen.