Kate (2021)

Kate (2021)

 

Starring: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Woody Harrelson, Miku Patricia Martineau, Tadanobu Asano, Jun Kunimura, Michiel Huisman, Miyavi, Mari Yamamoto
Director: Cedric Nicolas-Troyan
Action Director: Jonathan Eusebio, Akihiro Haga, Hiroo Minami

 

In my review of The Old Guard, I classified it as a bit of an outlier in the recent batch of female spy/assassin action thrillers, due to its fantasy elements and strong male presence among the protagonists. Kate, on the other hand, fits neatly in the mold. Much like The Old Guard, it draws a lot of inspiration from the John Wick films, although this time it is more understandable: the executive producer is David Leitch, who produced the JW trilogy (and helped direct the first one). While TOG took its primary inspiration from Highlander, this one instead borrows from the classic film noir D.O.A.

The titular character, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead of Birds of Prey, is a female assassin working for some shadowy agency. Her handler is Varrick (Woody Harrelson), who raised her to be a killer after she was orphaned—her parents were murdered when she was young. While on a mission in Osaka, Kate is forced to shoot her target dead…in front of his young daughter. Although, she does go through with the hit, she starts to have reservations about the job.

Ten months later, Kate is now in Tokyo awaiting her next mission: kill the head of the Kijima Clan of Yakuza (Jun Kunimura, of Godzilla Final Wars and Tomie: Forbidden Fruit). Right when she’s about to pull the trigger, she starts feeling sick and accidentally misfires, hitting Kijima in the shoulder. On the run from both the police and the Yakuza, Kate steals a car—a slick sports car covered in neon led lights, including underglow--and makes a break for it. Unfortunately, she blacks out and gets in an accident, just in time for the police to find her.

Kate wakes up the next day at the hospital, where the doctor informs her that she has been poisoned. Not just any poison, mind you. Someone slipped her a mickey filled with polonium-204 and now she’s dying of radiation poisoning! Talk about your awful way to kick the bucket! Could it have been the guy she picked up at a bar for a one-night stand? Maybe. She escapes the hospital by taking the doctor hostage before fleeing. Her new mission: find Kijima and kill him before she herself dies. And to get to him—the man rarely goes out in public—she finds herself having to kidnap his niece, Ane (Miku Patricia Martineau), who happens to be girl who watched her father get gunned down in Osaka. Things are about to get very interesting, very fast.

I do like the poisoning angle of the story, since it keeps the suspense going throughout the movie. Just like the proverbial “bomb under the table,” the fact that Kate will just keel over dead from radiation poisoning at any moment means that any delay, any setback, any small injury she acquires will make it that much more difficult for her to complete her mission. Moreover, the movie makes it clear that she will probably not make it out of this movie alive, so the question “will she successfully get her revenge” hangs over every scene. Attentive viewers will notice that the wounds on her body get worse and worse as the film progresses, as the radioactive isotope ionizes more and more of her tissues and organs.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead is an interesting choice for a film like this. She did show off her action chops in Birds of Prey, for which she got a significant amount of praise. And she played an exceptionally resourceful female character in the paranoia-suspense thriller 10 Cloverfield Lane. Winstead also has a solid horror background, with roles in the Black Christmas remake; Final Destination 3; and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. She plays the role of a someone who has lived a subhuman life, who discovers her own humanity during her last hours of life. She is completely believable as the hard-as-nails Kate who, while on a mindlessly-violent quest for revenge, sees her young self in her hostage and starts to truly care about someone. This is especially true as the film reaches the inevitable tragic conclusion.

Playing foil to Kate is the young Ane-chan, played by newcomer Miku Martineau. This is a trickier character, since she’s full-on teen rebel when we first meet her, so much of her dialog is laced with profanity—both in English and Japanese. While the other characters use swearing sparingly, she goes all Samuel L. Jackson on the audience and honestly, it starts to get grating. It’s mainly in the last few scenes that she really puts on a performance worthy of the character. The rest of the supporting cast is made up of seasoned veterans, from the always dependable Woody Harrelson to Tadanobu Asano (No. 13 Neighbor and Fearless).

The action was provided by the 87eleven Stunt Team, with Jonathan Eusebio being the uncredited stunt coordinator and supervisor of Winstead’s combat training. Mary Elizabeth in fact had started training with them before for Gemini Man and Birds of Prey, with a regime that included jiu-jitsu and boxing. Moreover, she trained in with the Thai military—Bangkok stands in for Tokyo in some scenes--in the use of sniper rifles. For the most part, the action satisfies, although like The Old Guard suffers from a climax that is dwarfed by the earlier set pieces. Along for the ride in the choreography department are Japanese stuntmen Akihiro Haga and Hiroo Minami. Both men have extensive experience in Japanese tokusatsu shows, while the latter has also worked as Hiroyuki Sanada’s stunt double in a number of recent projects.

The first big fight occurs at a Japanese club, where Kate faces off with more than a dozen Yakuza enforcers armed with tanto daggers. This is a particularly brutal fight, with Winstead switching back and forth between her gun and knives as she dodges attacks from multiple attackers. In one memorable bit, she stabs a guy through the bottom of his mouth and the blade comes up through his nose(!). Not only is the choreography sound, but the photography, editing and art direction of the entire sequence are all tops, too. In fact, the entire movie looks great and just a fantastically-shot action opus.

The second big action sequence is a kinetic gunfight set in a series of back streets populated by outdoor restaurants. Kate has to navigate these smaller streets and alleyways as several Yakuza hitmen open fire on her. In one part, reminiscent of Jeeja Yanin’s Chocolate, Kate has to negotiate a series of platform-like window sills, jumping from one to another like a deadly real-life video game.

Finally, the showstopper for many viewers is a fight with a Yakuza bigwig in the penthouse of a posh apartment building. Kate’s opponent is played by famous Japanese musician Miyavi (Bleach and Kong: Skull Island), and their showdown is absolutely fera. Knives, bottles, corkscrews and other objects become deadly weapons as the two just beat the hell out of each other until one of them—or both—are simply unable to continue. And for a fight this intense, it’s only appropriate that it ends in an equally-brutal way, with one character getting part of their head taken off in surprising manner.

It’s such a shame the finale is so conventional and, shall I say, “safe.” Oh sure, there are a lot of bullets fired, but it lacks the panache and creativity of the other action sequences. Thankfully, Kate benefits from better pacing than films like Ava and The Old Guard, with the set pieces being well distributed throughout the film. So even though the climax doesn’t quite get the adrenaline running like the earlier ones, it doesn’t feel like you’ve been waiting forever for little payoff. And with the strong cast, great production values, and impeccable technical aspects, it makes Kate a worthy recommendation among female-centric action films.