'Kate' Review
R: Strong bloody violence and language throughout
Runtime: 1 Hr and 46 Minutes
Production Companies: 87North Productions, Screen Arcade
Distributor: Netflix
Director: Cedric Nicolas-Troyan
Writer: Umair Aleem
Cast: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Miku Martineau, Woody Harrelson
Release Date: September 10, 2021
Select Theaters and Netflix
Meticulous and preternaturally skilled, Kate is the perfect specimen of a finely tuned assassin at the height of her game. But when she uncharacteristically blows an assignment targeting a member of the yakuza in Tokyo, she quickly discovers she’s been poisoned, a brutally slow execution that gives her less than 24 hours to exact revenge on her killers. As her body swiftly deteriorates, Kate forms an unlikely bond with the teenage daughter of one of her past victims.
If there’s anything that works in Kate’s favor, it’s the fact that it was shot in location in Tokyo, Japan. Cedric Nicolas-Troyan takes advantage of neon-filled scenery to make the film look glitzy. It makes you want to book a trip to Japan. Hell, my editor Myan already booked a trip there and I might be next. I’m not complimenting the filmmaker though because it's clear that he uses the city to gain style points so it can look different from the onslaught of femme fatale flicks we’ve gotten this year, like Gunpowder Milkshake and The Protégé. It’s not that this movie makes the city look pretty, it’s the city that makes this movie look pretty. I’ll give props to cinematographer Lyle Vincent (who has often worked with Cory Finley and Ana Lily Amirpour), whose shots and camera movements combine the city’s natural pop and color with the dark and violent rampage the titular lead is on.
That being said, this is the most uncomfortable femme fatale assassin movie I’ve ever sat through. Congrats, Peppermint (that movie with Jennifer Garner mowing down Latinos), someone made a revenge action movie with even worse optics than yours!
Ever since the success of David Leitch’s Atomic Blonde in 2017, there has been a new wave of action films using the femme fatale archetype where a white woman (usually of American descent) who is either a contract killer, a scorned soul seeking revenge, or a spy goes up against a criminal group of whatever to avenge a loved one or save the free world or protect a child. It’s been done so many times in the past few years that by the time Gunpowder Milkshake came out this summer on Netflix, I was already over it. Now, thanks to good ol’ Netflix (again), we got Kate, another derivative action thriller that has the same unapologetic and problematic white trash energy as Logan Paul’s trip to Japan in 2017.
In this film, you have Kate (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) as an assassin who, much like many others of her type, has been trained since childhood and mentored by an old white dude (Woody Harrelson) who acts as their father figure and commanding operative, played by a way-too-good actor who deserves better. While operating in Japan for several years, specifically killing crime bosses of the Yakuza –– because Hollywood just loves to have them as the basis of every Japan-based action flick –– a mission goes awry and she discovers that she’s been poisoned. With only 24 hours to live, she goes on a one-woman warpath to exact vengeance on the Yakuza, who she believes are the culprits behind her inevitable death. This leads her to Ani (Miku Martineau), a vulgar and precarious teenage girl whose father she murdered on a mission many years ago.
Somebody saw that one scene of Hawkeye murdering the Yakuza in Endgame and decided to make an R-rated version of it. To reiterate my own words from my review of 2018’s Peppermint, “I do think that race and a lead character’s occupation play an intricate part in your enjoyment of an action thriller. Taken had a former CIA op go to an entirely different country to take down sex traffickers. John Wick had an assassin take out a Russian mafia.” White-on-white crime is fine! Who cares? In Peppermint, you had a white suburban American mom steamrolling Mexicans in their turf. Now, you have an American white woman in Japan steamrolling Japanese people in the most bloody and grotesque way possible. Just like Peppermint, Kate plays out like a Death Wish clone with a John Wick twist where it relishes delivering over-the-top, stylistic, and bloody violent kills… but instead of being badass, it comes across as racially charged due to the victims, the location, and central lead herself.
I adore Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who has proven to be a badass action star in her own right since Sky High, but with Kate she portrays a cold, detestable character full of nothing but blind rage. While other characters of her archetype had some sort of humanity to them, Kate is one-dimensional and written to be a soulless and cold-hearted mad woman masked as a “badass”. With her life slipping away every second due to the poison, the film puts her in various Japanese locations ripping apart her targets in graphic ways or harassing innocent civilians for personal motives. Each action sequence is positioned to top the previous in terms of body count. At a certain point, it makes your stomach churn due to the detailed and bloody deaths and the hate-filled face of the person at the helm of the executions. There came a point that I was rooting for the Yakuza to take Kate down because she’s a fucking psychopath that’s straight-up committing acts of international terrorism.
I’m not tryna be PC or “woke” but in 2021, after all the Asian hate we’ve seen in this country within the past year, you really want to make another movie where it’s deemed glorious to see a white woman go full Karen on Asian people in their territory? You could’ve done this exact same plot in a setting that wouldn’t make it feel so racially charged. Very early into the film, Kate feels the need to get laid because hey, assassins need to have their fun. She can easily get any Japanese man she wants, but the only person who catches her eye in a restaurant is the only white dude in the area and the next scene shows her sleeping with him. Placing this woman in an Asian country, killing Asians, and only sleeping with white dudes makes it feel so ill-conceived.
Poor optics aside, maybe casting an actress of Japanese descent to take out these Japanese characters would still come across as egregiously one-note. The story is full of every formulaic assassin action film cliche you’ve seen before and it’s bogged down by terrible, derivative writing. The characters are so bare-bones and you can see the predictable beats coming from a mile away. Hell, if you’ve seen Gunpowder Milkshake, you don’t need to see Kate, for it hits 60% of the same exact beats. Newcomer Miku Martineau is really good as Ani and is promising as a talented actress who deserves better, but with the context of how M.E.W.’s Kate treats this kid, you dislike her so much that their bonding comes off as anything but natural.
The film desperately tries to replicate the work of David Leitch (who serves as an executive producer on Kate) and goes, “Hey, aren’t these gory kills as fun as John Wick?” And the answer comes down to “no”, for it doesn’t even understand the elements of what makes a stand-out action sequence. The action is brutal and graphic but they lack any panache from a technical or creative standpoint. Much like a ton of action films this year, an ample amount of shots incorporate dizzying handheld and quick edits that at times is hard to follow. I’m so damn tired of western film techniques because these action movies end up looking so damn bland. Plus, for someone whose body is supposed to be deteriorating as the film progresses, Kate is fully functional throughout most of the film. She takes physical damage, but much like your average American action hero, she often comes back up without a scratch.
As far as femme fatale action thrillers go, Kate is the lowest of the low. It has the worst optics of any film of its nature, a derivative story, and so much hate in its heart that halfway through I wanted to shut it off and turn on Birds of Prey because it was making me sick and destroying my love for Mary Elizabeth Winstead. This shit is a prime example of what NOT to do when creating these kinds of movies and I hope it gets through the thick skull of white Hollywood from now on.
