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 Continue reading
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