Kate

The world works in a kind of spiral, where everything 30 years ago becomes popular again, with small alterations. Kate is a story of a perfect assassin, betrayed and raising hell in the name of vengeance as poison is slowly killing her. Stylish, with Japanese neo-noir design, involving the Yakuza and greedy Westerners, it is a return to the 90s stories, where lone gunmen (people?) were dealing their own brand of justice in a corrupt and decadent world full of greed and inequality. Of course, the main character is female now, but you've seen this film before, a few times perhaps, and everything is pretty standard.

What shines trough the bland plot is the acting of Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who singlehandedly carries the film through. In fact, every other actor is an extra in the plot anyway, so she either made this film work or not. And it works. Kudos also to Jun Kunimura, who can, with a slight adjustment of body posture and a couple of facial expressions, tell an entire story in a second.

Bottom line: a predictable story from start to finish, but made well and acted well. Ridiculous body count which could have, with small changes to the plot, be significantly reduced and the time gained spent on storytelling.

This was a La Femme Nikita/DOA situation filtered though live action anime with touches of the current slate of action movies like Atomic Blonde, Hardcore Henry, The Raid, and John Wick.

I guess I don't get the critics being harsher on this than any other action movie of late. Stuff happens. Action happens. Some more stuff happens. Some more action happens. It's a fun romp that dosnt outstay it's welcome. And you get to see a unique fight haircut.

When 'Kate' (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), an expert sniper and lethal assassin, botches a job, she learns she has been poisoned and only has about 24hours to live. With her handler, Varrick (Woody Harrelson), she tries to finish her contract before she dies.

This film plays out much like 'Crank' (2006), in that Kate is on the verge of death and has to rely on using stimulants to keep moving. The cinematography is great and the casting is solid, especially with the snarky antics of Ani (Miku Patricia Martineau), but falls a little short in terms of believability. The twist at the end is predictable, but satisfying.

Worth a watch!

Netflix is at it again with another algorithm driven "mashup". This movie pulls from: La Femme Nikita, Atomic Blonde, Kill Bill and Crank (among others), but, thanks to slick production and solid acting from Mary Elizabeth Winstead it WORKS MUCH BETTER than I expected. The high contrast, rain-slick neon streets of Osaka and Tokyo are on full display here and the pacing is fast, with just enough back-story to bring the characters to life in a way that was engaging. A couple things of note:

1) The action is more similar to Atomic Blonde in that our female anti-hero is up against an army of dudes, and, instead of some easy one-punch win (a-la Kill Bill) she employs all manner of environmental tools and favors speed over strength. While hyper action movies are always on the low-end of believable - the no-nonsense violence and savagery (and creativity) of the weapons / tools she uses seemed accurate for the character.

2) Mary Elizabeth Winstead nails it. From subtile facial expressions during character moments, to fast action fight-scenes, I bought her in the role. There was zero "cringe" in her approach to the character and I was totally won over.

Finally, a few others have complained that this is yet another "white person kills asians" movies. There's merit to that issue but I would argue that - especially towards the end - the context of western vs eastern (Japanese in this case) crime culture is brought specifically into the plot as topics of honor and loyalty are specifically discussed and contribute to the evolution of the plot in meaningful ways. Personally - as a white guy who spent 7 years in Japan and who speaks Japanese - I thought they did a great job of bringing this stereotype into the plot vs just having another "white action person takes on Asian crime-syndicate" movie...

I have a major crush on Winsted. Having said that, good fights, bad cgi car chase. Watchable.