Kate Review

2014’s John Wick has upped the game across the action genre. Many films have tried to replicate that series’ style. Kate is the latest film trying to follow in John Wick’s footsteps.

Kate (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is an American assassin working in Japan. Killing yakuza bosses is a dangerous game and Kate gets poisoned with a radioactive substance. She only has 24 hours to live so she uses her remaining time to get revenge.

Kate was produced by 87North Productions, the same production company that made John Wick, Atomic Blonde, and Nobody. The trailer for Kate even advertised that it was from the producers of Atomic Blonde. This gave Kate a lot of creditability amongst action addicts. The action was where Kate was at its strongest. There was a lot of carnage as guns and knives were used and Kate showed off her hand-to-hand combat skills. For a character dying from radiation poisoning, she was able to put up a hell of a fight.

The action highlights in the film were when Kate went into a restaurant to interrogate and kill a load of yakuza bosses, and a fight against a lot of goons in the back alleys of Tokyo. Blood was let as necks were stabbed, throats were slit, men had bottles smashed against their heads and one poor bugger had his head shoved onto a flaming grill. Even though the action sequences were well choregraphed and shot, they lacked the personality of similar action films like John Wick and Atomic Blonde. Kate as an action spectacle was a much better than a lot of offering in the genre.

Kate had a simple set up for an action film: the main character only 24 hours to complete their mission of vengeance. It allows for a fast-paced flick, like the Crank films. Kate had to pump herself with drugs to keep herself going, like Grace in Terminator: Dark Fate.

The filmmakers were following the John Wick template by having a one-person army having to go on a rampage against a criminal organisation. It’s a basic setup that worked for films like Nobody and Gunpowder Milkshake. Like the main characters in John Wick and Nobody, Kate goes through the wringer. She gets the crap beaten out of her and at the end of the fights she’s barely able to stand. Due to the radiation poisoning, Kate’s condition was deteriorating throughout the film.

Kate did have some similarities to Gunpowder Milkshake which was also released this year. Both were action films centred on women who were trained from a young age to be assassins. The main characters in both films had to team up with a younger character and had to protect them. Both were even lit in a similar way because they both used neon lighting.

Kate had a familiar story for an assassin-based action film. However, unlike a lot of its contemporaries, Kate treated its story a lot more seriously. Films like the John Wick films, Nobody, and Gunpowder Milkshake had a tongue-in-cheek approach. They were all set in over-the-top worlds and there was a load of humour in those films. Kate lacked that and the film ended up being sillier because of its po-faced approach.

Another issue with Kate was the character of Ani (Miku Martineau). Ani was the niece of a yakuza boss that Kate kidnapped. She was annoying to the extreme. Ani was an irritating teenager who Kate has to drag around and became a burden during the first half of the film. I wanted Kate to shoot Ani in the head just to shut her up.

Kate was a simple actioner that hardly going to revolutionise the genre. If you want a breezy film with some well-crafted action scenes that it’s worth watching on Netflix.