![]() ![]() ![]() Winstead is a highly competent actress at the worst of times, but not even she can rattle the cage of a screenplay so destitute of creativity when it can simply patter against generic plot points and character beats. Winstead plays the lead role as best she can, and offers a fairly decent fist of being an action hero despite lacking the fluid physicality of more seasoned genre performers – the hand-to-hand fight choreography really stretches her ability to breaking point as well as the film’s believability that she could last so long against so many, all whilst suffering the rapidly mortal effects of radiation poisoning. Kate endeavours to steal outright from the John Wick franchise by casting Woody Harrelson as the hard-bitten mentor role played by Ian McShane in the Keanu Reeves franchise, with the actor not even trying to hide the film’s expected last-act twist in his arc as storytelling takes a back-seat to various gunbattles and fisticuffs. If, however, you’ve seen any films made before 2010, Kate is a decidedly mediocre if pleasingly stylish take on the assassin genre, offering little thought and even less room to breathe as it lurches from one blood-soaked orgy of death and carnage to the next, with pre-teen cursing about the only drawcard other than plentiful headshots and body horror from knife fights. Kate works as both a wantonly violent derivation of similar cinema fare ( Atomic Blonde, John Wick, et al) and a tiresome heroic killer archetype, with Winstead’s assassin character finding some semblance of humanity (suddenly, for no real reason the film bothers to give us) before her valiant, almost cathartic, final showdown. It’s a gangbusters action festival, a perplexingly shallow Lone Wolf and Cub ripoff with echoes of Besson, Tarantino and Refn mixed in with less astute narrative complexity. If you’ve never seen a film before and you were born within the last 12 to 13 years, Kate will be the greatest film you’ve ever seen in your life. Her mission is barricaded by the usurper Renji (Tadanobu Asano), one of Kijima’s advisors, who has betrayed his master for his own personal gain, and wants to use Ani as a pawn to bring down those who oppose him. Along the way she meets rebellious Ani, niece to Kijima, to use as a bargaining chip before eventually taking her under her wing as she slowly starts to feel the effects of the Polonium’s radiation. After being poisoned with Polonium, Kate has roughly 24 hours left to live before dying of radiation sickness, so she decides to hunt down the target in Kijima (Jun Kunimira) for having her killed. Winstead plays the title character, Kate, an assassin working for a mysterious organisation and handled by Varrick (Woody Harrelson) after she is tasked with assassinating the leader of a Tokyo triad family and the rest of his associates, and failing, she wants to get out and live a normal life. With its dynamite ticking clock premise and atmospheric Japanese backdrop one could find a pleasingly fruitful directorial style from Nicolas-Troyan were it not for the incoherent logic and poorly written characters, although to be fair lead actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead ( Scott Pilgrim, 10 Cloverfield Lane) seems to at least be having fun shooting and slicing her way through a lengthy cavalcade of nameless Asian Henchmen types, so perhaps logic and character beats aren’t really required. Hyper-violent action B-movies don’t come more neon-infused than Cedric Nicolas-Troyan’s electrifying and visceral Kate, a pastiche of Leon: The Professional, Crank and John Wick, and although lacking character depth or any kind of uniqueness to differentiate itself from others of this aesthetic, is just bloody enough to warrant at least one cursory watch on Netflix at some stage. Synopsis: A female assassin has 24 hours to get vengeance on her murderer before she dies. Principal Cast : Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Miku Martineau, Woody Harrelson, Tadanobu Asano, Jun Kunimira, Michiel Huisman, Miyavi, Amelia Crouch, Avan Caryofyllis.
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