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The supporting cast delivers well in their roles, with Woody Harrelson and Jun Kunimira being the biggest names with the most meat to chew. Winstead’s comedic timing is what stood out the most, easily selling the campier lines that come with the genre, in addition to the physically demanding work and dramatic beats.
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This is her first-time front and center, and she uses the time well. Throughout her roughly two-decade career, Winstead has been in multiple action films as a supporting character, usually stealing the show in films like Scott Pilgrim vs. Needless to say, one of the better aspects of Kate is Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s performance as the title character. While on her mission, Kate crosses paths with the daughter of one of her past victims. She spends her last day alive on a manhunt in Tokyo, intending to find Kijima and kill him before she dies. After she assassinates the brother of prominent Yakuza boss Kijima, Kate is poisoned and expected to die within 24 hours. Kate is titled after its main character, Kate, an assassin working under contractor Varrick. There’s also a more problematic aspect of the film regarding the inclusion of white people in front and behind the camera in an otherwise Asian-centric film, but more on that towards the end. Mary Elizabeth delivers an intense and entertaining performance, proving her action heroine abilities once again, but unfortunately, the film’s merits don’t rise above that and some interesting moments of cinematography.
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Kate, directed by Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, is yet another example of this penchant from the streaming studio. She just has to care about Ani-pay no attention to the mountains of corpses piled up behind her.Once upon a time, I humorlessly told a friend that Netflix gives B-movie scripts an A-movie budget. Kate has to feel remorse, but not for slaughtering a bunch of yakuza.
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When left to her own devices, Martineau makes it work-the scenes in which Ani finds new clothes for Kate, and later, when she takes selfies with the two of them, are novel in a movie that otherwise takes itself pretty seriously-but the progression of the plot, which involves Varrick attempting to turn Ani against Kate with the knowledge that Kate is responsible for the violence brought down upon her family, makes it clear that Ani exists largely as just another plot device in Kate’s story. Martineau is charming, but there’s not that much of Ani outside of her relationship with Kate. As it turns out, Renji’s plan for ascension includes wiping out all of Kijima’s family, and Kate is too soft-hearted to let Ani just die. Though we first meet Ani as the daughter of the man we see Kate assassinating at the beginning of the movie, she ends up becoming Kate’s sidekick. The character of Ani (Miku Martineau), Kijima’s niece, appears to be similarly calculated to serve as a remedy. Hollywood Keeps Condemning Good Directors to Franchise Dreck. Simone Biles Just Shocked the Gymnastics World Again It’s Excruciating.īillionaires Are Holding a Gun to the Culture Industry’s Head Netflix’s New Show Stars Matthew Broderick as Richard Sackler. While the revenge thriller seems to want to be seen as a female John Wick, making it only the latest in a recent spate of neon-hued movies about female contract killers (the trailer touts that it’s from “a producer of” Atomic Blonde, and it arrives less than a couple of months after Gunpowder Milkshake), this bloody tourist trip through Japan is ultimately more like one of Kate’s fellow Netflix originals, the controversial and culturally insensitive Jared Leto yakuza flick The Outsider. Still, the apparent self-awareness is too little, too late, and doesn’t redeem what is fundamentally a xenophobic trope. In fairness, if the premise seems depressingly familiar (not to mention ill-timed after an eruption of anti-Asian violence), the filmmakers-director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan and writer Umair Aleem-appear to be aware of this: They supply Kate with a biracial sidekick, and a major twist late in the movie attempts to turn the formula on its head. At a glance, the movie, which sends Winstead’s titular assassin rampaging through Tokyo, seems like yet another film wherein a white American protagonist mows down nameless character after nameless character in a foreign country. When the trailer for Kate, a new Netflix film starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Woody Harrelson, was first released last month, some viewers expressed concern.
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