Kate (2021) Review

“Kate” Netflix Poster

Director: Cedric Nicolas-Troyan
Cast: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Miku Martineau, Woody Harrelson, Jun Kunimura, Tadanobu Asano, Michiel Huisman, Miyavi, Gemma Brooke Allen
Running Time: 106 min.

By Paul Bramhall

The Netflix action flick template is a fairly predictable one at this point – take one adult character with the ability to cause plentiful grievous bodily harm. Make them a tortured soul due to some generic trauma that happened in the past, have them reluctantly team up with a much younger character, and insert a straightforward plot that allows for an action scene to never be too far away. We’ve had Chris Hemsworth play a tortured mercenary reluctantly teamed up with the son of a drug lord he’s been paid to protect in Extraction. Boxes ticked. We’ve also had Jason Momoa play a grieving father reluctantly teamed up with his daughter to take out the big pharma CEO he holds responsible for his wife’s death in Sweet Girl. All boxes ticked accordingly. Next out of the ranks is Kate, which sees Mary Elizabeth Winstead play a world-weary assassin reluctantly teamed up with the daughter of one of her hits. Once more, all boxes ticked!

Needless to say that for those who clock into movies hoping for a shred of originality, Kate isn’t going to be the movie for you. The sophomore feature length production of director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, who primarily worked as a visual effects artist before debuting with the sequel The Huntsman: Winter’s War in 2016 (notably he was the visual effects supervisor on the first one with 2012’s Snow White and the Huntsman), Kate takes place in a hyper stylised version of Japan. Opening in Osaka, we meet Winstead as the titular Kate is about to take out a yakuza boss. When it’s revealed his daughter is also with him though, it breaches the assassins code to never go through with a hit if a child is involved. With the yakuza boss in question being particularly elusive, the powers that be insist she goes through with it, leaving the daughter splattered in her father’s blood, and an assassin with the required tortured soul plot device.

Kate has an ace up its sleeve though that’s only revealed when the plot quickly moves on to 10 months later in Tokyo, and Winstead finds herself poisoned with radioactive material as part of a revenge plot by her targets brother. With only 24 hours to live, armed with a handful of transfusions and a devil may care attitude, she embarks on a bloody mission to get to the bottom of who poisoned her and put a bullet in their head. It’s at this point that I realised Kate is basically a Netflix-centric remake of Crank, the riotous 2006 Jason Statham vehicle that sees him in exactly the same situation, only with the variable that he has to keep his adrenaline levels up to prevent the poison from stopping his heart. There’re even a few nods to Crank throughout, from the heartbeat sound effect whenever the poison threatens to take hold, to at its most gratuitous, the same ‘finger gun’ gimmick being used in one of its action scenes.

Most viewers will likely know Winstead as either The Huntress from 2020’s Birds of Prey, or as the daughter of John McClane in Live Free or Die Hard and A Good Day to Die Hard. She puts in a solid performance as we’re initially introduced to her suave assassin, and over the 105 minute runtime proceeds to get increasingly beaten, battered, and bruised, as well as having to deal with teeth falling out and nose bleeds from the poison literally making her body gradually fall apart. Miku Patricia Martineau plays the teen daughter that Winstead reluctantly takes under her wing once it becomes clear the same yakuza she’s after also view her life as expendable. Kate is Martineau’s debut after doing voicework on a handful of kid’s TV shows, and her expletive laden performance that frequently switches from English to Japanese and back again manages to just as frequently cross the line into grating territory, before crossing back again.

Director Nicolas-Troyan appears to be a fan of Japanese cinema, and no doubt eagle eyed viewers will appreciate the image of Takeshi ‘Beat’ Kitano appearing on a billboard in one shot, plus another scene has characters watching the Hiroyuki Sanada starring sci-fi series Uchu Kara No Messeji: Ginga Taisen on TV. The Japanese cast is also stellar, with Jun Kunimura (The Wailing, Outrage) as the brother of Winstead’s hit, and Tadanobu Asano (Harmonium, Ichi the Killer) as his trusted advisor. The presence of both of these Japanese cinema heavyweights alone lifts the overall quality of Kate, and whenever they’re onscreen proceedings feel like they’re elevated beyond the trappings of what’s essentially another female assassin flick.

At its heart though another female assassin flick is what it is, and much like those that have come before it, ultimately Kate hinges its entertainment value on the quality of its action scenes. Nicolas-Troyan certainly doesn’t seem to be leaving anything to chance, bringing in 2 fight choreographers in the form of Power Rangers alumni Akihiro Haga (who can be spotted as the bartender in Karate Kill – which he worked on as a stuntman) and Hiroo Minami (who’s doubled for Hiroyuki Sanada in the likes of Bullet Train, 47 Ronin and The Wolverine). In addition 2 stunt coordinators are also onboard in the form of Spencer Sano (who did stunt work on both of the John Wick sequels) and Kawee ‘Sang’ Sirikhanaerut. 

The presence of Sirikhanaerut is notable since he’s considered the go-to stunt coordinator in Thailand. His experience includes working with Panna Rittikrai on the likes of Ong Bak, Born to Fight, and Tom Yum Goong, to handling the Thai shoots on everything from big budget blockbusters like Rambo, to DTV flicks like Hard Target 2 and Triple Threat. The fact that a lot of Kate’s action was filmed in Thailand with local stunt crews gives many of the action scenes a welcome hard-hitting edge. One particular scene is a standout, that sees Winstead infiltrate a traditional Japanese restaurant, of which the many suited yakuza dining inside soon see it become a frenzied bloodbath owing equal tips of the hat to City of Violence and The Man from Nowhere.

It’s fair to say that whenever Winstead is brandishing some kind of weapon – be it a firearm, dagger, the stems of smashed wine glasses, a coffee grinder, chopsticks, there’s many! – she looks suitably impressive. The Night Comes for Us levels of gore help to deliver some suitably creative moments as well, even though they’re a little too obviously created by CGI. Empty handed however she falters, suffering from the same issue Ruby Rose fell foul of in The Doorman, in that her hits simply don’t convey much power, regardless of how enthusiastically the stuntmen on the receiving end attempt to sell them. Her kicks are the number one guilty party here, which in one scene which pits her against the single named Japanese musician Miyavi (Unbroken, Bleach) barely look like taps. However luckily for us, for almost all of her action scenes the fight team ensure she’s armed and ready to enthusiastically hack, slash, and stab away.

There are times when the hyper stylised version of Tokyo that Nicolas-Troyan has created, all popping neon and towering skyscrapers which have anime projected onto them, doesn’t quite gel with the down and dirty feel of the action scenes. This is no more apparent than the bizarre inclusion of a CGI generated car chase, which looks to be intentionally styled to look anime influenced, much like similar sequences were in the previous year’s Peninsula. Tonally though it seems out of place, and regardless of how intended it was, there’s nothing worse than a weightless looking car crash. This is a minor gripe though, and for the most part the authentic on-location Japan shot sequences blend in seamlessly with the digitally created version of the city, giving Kate an undeniably digital look, but one which works well thanks to the ever present neon and Ninja Assassin-esque CGI blood splatter. 

It doesn’t look like we’re going to be running out of female assassin flicks anytime soon, and in the grand scheme of things Kate isn’t likely to be remembered once it falls outside of the Netflix algorithms. Predictable to a tee with a plot which has literally been done countless times before, Nicolas-Troyan isn’t so much interested in creating an original piece of work as he is creating a 105 minute excuse for characters to kill each other in a variety of fun and imaginative set pieces. How much entertainment audiences will extract from Kate will likely depend on how much they feel a need to be invested in the chaos that unfolds. In one scene Martineau turns to Winstead and says, “You’re so cool but you’re also a terminator bitch.” The line is a fair description of the level of characterisation that Winstead’s character gets, so if your expectations are set accordingly, Kate could well be worth checking out.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 6/10